[Senate Hearing 110-11]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 110-11
COSTS OF WILDFIRE SUPPRESSION
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
on
THE STATUS OF THE FEDERAL LAND MANAGEMENT AGENCIES EFFORTS TO CONTAIN
THE COSTS OF THEIR WILDFIRE SUPPRESSION ACTIVITIES AND TO CONSIDER
RECENT INDEPENDENT REVIEWS OF AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THOSE EFFORTS
__________
JANUARY 30, 2007
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
34-268 WASHINGTON : 2007
_____________________________________________________________________________
For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512�091800
Fax: (202) 512�092250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402�090001
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
JEFF BINGAMAN, New Mexico, Chairman
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico
BYRON L. DORGAN, North Dakota LARRY E. CRAIG, Idaho
RON WYDEN, Oregon CRAIG THOMAS, Wyoming
TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana RICHARD BURR, North Carolina
MARIA CANTWELL, Washington JIM DeMINT, South Carolina
KEN SALAZAR, Colorado BOB CORKER, Tennessee
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama
BLANCHE L. LINCOLN, Arkansas GORDON H. SMITH, Oregon
BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont JIM BUNNING, Kentucky
JON TESTER, Montana MEL MARTINEZ, Florida
Robert M. Simon, Staff Director
Sam E. Fowler, Chief Counsel
Frank J. Macchiarola, Republican Staff Director
Judith K. Pensabene, Republican Chief Counsel
Scott Miller, Counsel
Frank Gladics, Republican Professional Staff Member
C O N T E N T S
----------
STATEMENTS
Page
Bingaman, Hon. Jeff, U.S. Senator from New Mexico................ 1
Caswell, James, Co-Chair, Strategic Issues Panel on Fire
Suppression Costs.............................................. 54
Craig, Hon. Larry E., U.S. Senator from Idaho.................... 39
Domenici, Hon. Pete V., U.S. Senator from New Mexico............. 2
Fong, Phyllis K., Inspector General, Department of Agriculture... 23
Hatfield, Nina Rose, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Business
Management and Wildlife Fire, Department of the Interior....... 3
McDowell, Bruce, Ph.D., Fellow, National Academy of Public
Administration................................................. 42
Nazzaro, Robin M., Director, Natural Resources and Environemnt,
Government Accountability Office............................... 14
Rey, Mark, Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment,
Department of Agriculture...................................... 5
Rowdabaugh, Kirk, State Forester, Arizona, on behalf of the
Western Governors' Association................................. 46
Salazar, Hon. Ken, U.S. Senator from Colorado.................... 34
Tester, Hon. John, U.S. Senator from Montana..................... 32
APPENDIXES
Appendix I
Responses to additional questions................................ 63
Appendix II
Additional material submitted for the record..................... 67
COSTS OF WILDFIRE SUPPRESSION
----------
TUESDAY, JANUARY 30, 2007
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room
SD-366, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Jeff Bingaman,
chairman, presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JEFF BINGAMAN, U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW
MEXICO
The Chairman. Why do we not go ahead and start the hearing.
Thank you all for coming.
This hearing is focused on the issue of the escalating
costs of wildfire management. Escalating wildfire management
costs have been a concern for decades. Despite a great deal of
discussion in this committee and elsewhere, I think it is fair
to say that we have not made great progress in containing
costs. In fact, wildfire spending is growing at an alarming
rate. The Federal land management agencies' fire management
costs have tripled since 1999. They spent a record $2 billion
last year on wildfire suppression alone.
Short and long-term climate change promises to only make
the problem worse, and possibly substantially worse.
As you can see from these pie charts that are over here,
wildfire management costs are taking up a larger and larger
part of the Forest Service budget. All the other programs, from
recreation to research and from grazing to grant programs,
suffer as a result of this increasing portion of the budget
that is having to go for wildfire suppression costs. Last year
about half of the Forest Service's discretionary budget was for
wildfire preparedness and suppression.
Senator Domenici. Which one is that?
The Chairman. That is the last one here on the right. Yes,
2006.
Senator Domenici. Is the green what you are talking about?
The Chairman. No, I am talking about the--green is what is
left, discretionary appropriations. The suppression
expenditures are red and the preparedness expenditures are the
yellow.
So the main point that the graphs try to make is that
particularly the cost of suppression of wildfires has been
growing very dramatically in recent years. The record-setting
expenditures last year and the failure of Congress to pass the
Interior appropriation bill leave us facing a very dire
wildfire suppression funding shortfall. If the Forest Service
is to go into the next fire season at the financial
preparedness level that we have come to expect in recent years,
the Congress needs to find about $900 million in supplemental
appropriations.
Without significant changes in policy and practice, the
current budgetary crisis will be commonplace. The rate at which
wildfire suppression costs are escalating and the wildfire
management policies that permit those costs to escalate clearly
are not sustainable, either financially, administratively, or
ecologically.
Their persistence can be explained only by failure at the
political and the bureaucratic level to deal with these issues.
We need a collaborative bipartisan approach to overcome the
inertia that seems to exist. To successfully contain these
costs, Congress and the agencies and State and local government
and individuals all need to take more responsibility.
We have two panels comprised of many of the best thinkers
that we have on this subject. They have put enormous effort
into identifying many of the key problems and coming up with
thoughtful recommendations to address them, and we want to
welcome all those who are going to testify.
Let me now turn to Senator Domenici for any opening
statement he would like to make, and then Nina Rose Hatfield is
going to be the first witness on the first panel. If any
members want to submit an opening statement, of course we will
make that part of the record. But let me defer to you, Senator
Domenici.
STATEMENT OF HON. PETE V. DOMENICI, U.S. SENATOR
FROM NEW MEXICO
Senator Domenici. Thank you very much, Senator Bingaman.
It is good that we have this hearing in spite of the fact
that we are crammed full of things to do. We have a very big
part to play in this responsibility, that is to find a better
way to take care of the firefighting and the costs, which seem
to go up and down, and with that we are getting some very, very
bad results in terms of what we have left in dollars and what
we are doing with our other operating budgets. There is no
question about it.
First, I want to thank you, Senator, for scheduling the
hearing. It seems like sometimes scheduling the hearing and
coming over for an hour and a half has more to do with pushing
things along than we used to think. This hearing has to have an
impact. We have to do something because of what we are going to
find out here.
I believe the situation must be addressed. We are moving in
the direction where nearly half of the discretionary funding of
this Forest Service budget is now expended on firefighting and
fire preparedness. This cannot be sustained. It is not the
same, but it is much like looking at the Social Security budget
and saying it is just right there in front of you, it cannot go
on. Pretty soon there will not be any money for the major
purpose for which you exist, and that is going to happen to
this Department. The Department is not going to have money for
all the other things and somebody is going to turn around and
say, where is it? While the forests have burned, we are
spending the money there.
There are a number of issues related to firefighting that
are out of control of the Federal agencies and we know that.
The weather is one. But unless somebody has some proof that it
is completely different than it has been heretofore, weather is
something that we face and we have in front of us all the time.
The explosive growth of homes within the wildland-urban
interface, and that is clearly one that is affecting us in a
major way, Senator Bingaman, the building of homes in this
area. I do not know what we can do about it, but nobody is
doing much about it. It is just growing like wildfire. You got
it.
The failure of local and State governments to address the
challenges of increased development in these areas is another
thing we must be aware of. There are some issues that can and
should be addressed by the Federal Government. I stand ready to
work with all involved to find ways to reduce these costs.
Senator Bingaman, clearly this is one where we want to work
together if we can find a way. I am speaking about a law we
passed in the 107th Congress requiring the Office of the
Inspector General of Agriculture to investigate wildfire deaths
which sometimes results in subsequent criminal charges. What I
am talking about here is that at the same time we have to be
careful about unintended consequences. One of them has to do
with what happens when an inspector general of Agriculture
investigates a wildfire death, and sometimes that results in
criminal charges.
This atmosphere could result in premature retirement of a
lot of firefighters. If this happens our margins of safety will
be reduced and quite likely it will increase the danger to the
remaining firefighters. As a result, the costs of firefighting
could go up as well.
I look forward to working with you, Senator Bingaman, and
others to find ways to reduce the costs of Federal wildland
firefighting. I hope that we will find ways to do that. I am
not sure which of the many suggestions are best, but we got to
do something.
Thank you, Senator, and thank you, witnesses. You are a
very good panel to take time to be with us today.
The Chairman. Okay, thank you very much.
Let us briefly introduce this first panel and then call on
Nina Rose Hatfield. She is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for
Business Management and Wildland Fire in the Department of the
Interior.
Also on our panel is: the Honorable Mark Rey, Under
Secretary for Natural Resources and the Environment in the
Department of Agriculture; Robin Nazzaro, who is the Director
of Natural Resources and Environment for the Government
Accountability Office; and finally the Honorable Phyllis K.
Fong, who is the Inspector General, Department of Agriculture.
We appreciate all of you being here, and we will start with
Nina.
STATEMENT OF NINA ROSE HATFIELD, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY,
BUSINESS MANAGEMENT AND WILDLAND FIRE, DEPARTMENT OF THE
INTERIOR
Ms. Hatfield. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, members of
the committee. We welcome this opportunity to appear before you
and provide the administration's view concerning wildland fire
suppression cost containment. As the Department of the Interior
and the Department of Agriculture work closely together in fire
management, we are providing you a joint statement.
We recognize that large fire events are costly and both
Congress and the administration have repeatedly expressed their
concerns about rising fire suppression costs. Our Departments
share these concerns and are committed to reducing costs. Over
the last several years, various studies and assessments
dedicated to fire suppression costs have been conducted and we
offer some testimony today to describe what we see as being the
current situation, the progress that we have already made, and
we believe we have made progress, and the measures that we are
taking to tackle this important issue.
When one reviews the 2006 season that we dealt with, what
we found was that the 2006 fire season went directly after the
2005 fire season. We did not have the typical slowdown that we
have during a winter season. So all of this contributed to an
unprecedented quantity of acres being burned, with 14 fires
topping 100,000 acres in size, 5 on national forests, 7 in
Bureau of Land Management districts, and 2 in State
jurisdictions.
So in 2006 the acres that were burned were 131 percent
greater than the acres burned in 2000, almost a million acres
larger than in 2005 and 65 percent greater than the 10-year
average. So it is true that last year the Forest Service and
DOI spent $1.9 billion on all fire suppression. These wildland
fires were across all jurisdictions, totaling over 96,000
incidents that resulted in the burning of 9.9 million acres.
But we're pleased to note that, even in the face of what
was the largest fire season on record, we continued to achieve
nearly 98 percent success rate of attacking fires on the
initial attack, and that is a rate that is comparable to how we
have been able to fight fires in less severe years. Of these
fires, approximately 26 percent of them exceeded the average
cost as determined by a stratified cost index for the large
Forest Service fires.
Now, in an effort to decrease the severity of fire, the
Departments have reduced hazardous fuels for nearly 20 million
acres, 16 million acres through hazardous fuel reduction
programs over the last several years since 2001 and about 4
million acres of landscape restoration accomplished through
other management activities that we are involved in. So while
we have a very focused effort to remove the accumulation of
hazardous fuel on our Federal lands, we believe that that is
having a positive effect on the land and is lowering the risk
of property damage.
At the same time that we have been doing that, we certainly
have been paying attention to cost controls and finding ways in
which we can operate more efficiently. Based on a historical
analysis of cost per fire an acre, the Forest Service large
suppression costs over the past 3 years are essentially flat or
below the 10-year average, and while the 2006 numbers are above
the average based on a stratified cost index, we are encouraged
that overall progress is shown in terms of the way that we have
been providing and applying cost saving measures.
So while the costs of many of our firefighting resources
like aviation and other equipment have continued to increase
faster than the rate of inflation, what we see is really an
increase in productivity and cost control that has been
associated with our suppression activities.
Now, as you have mentioned, as we try to contain the cost
of firefighting we recognize that there are multiple factors
that contribute to the expense of fighting fires. These factors
include the weather, fuel type, terrain, location with respect
to the wildland-urban interface and other highly valued
landscapes, as well as the managerial decisions that are made
before and during fire incidents. In combination, these trends
present a continuing challenge for our efforts to decrease the
number of fires and the cost of incidents.
We do know that over 8 million new homes were added to the
WUI in the 1990's, representing about 60 percent of the new
homes constructed in the United States, and this is triple the
rate of growth and the rate of construction outside of the WUI,
which obviously presents for us a challenge of addressing
wildland fire costs in land areas such as locations as the WUI
where the fire suppression is inherently more expensive for us.
Another challenge has just been addressing the accumulation
of biomass in our forests and that is the reason that we have
worked so aggressively to reduce the amount of hazardous fuels
on Federal lands and restore the health of our public forests
and range lands. In 2006 more than half of the total acres that
we treated were inside the WUI and we continue to maintain this
as an emphasis, with the goal to treat approximately 2 million
acres in the WUI throughout our hazardous fuel reduction
program in this coming fiscal year.
The reports from GAO and the USDA OIG certainly focused on
managing fire suppression in the WUI and cost sharing for those
activities between the Federal and non-Federal entities. I
think that these reports certainly indicate the kinds of
complexities that we have as we fight large,
multijurisdictional fires, especially those located in the WUI.
So over the past 20 years we have certainly developed a
strong relationship, we think, with the States and our local
cooperators. Over time the need to maximize efficiency and
effectiveness has required a sharing of resources among all of
us to fight these multijurisdictional fires. We recognize the
need to review existing master cooperative agreements with our
State partners and ensure consistency with the 2001 update to
the Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy.
Toward this end, we are working with the States on an
inter-agency master cooperative agreement template that will
improve our cost-sharing methods and provide greater
consistency across the country.
The Chairman. Could you summarize the rest of your
statement, if you could?
Ms. Hatfield. I was just going to say, and now Secretary
Rey will address some of the specifics about what we have been
doing.
The Chairman. Terrific.
Secretary Rey, we are glad to hear from you and glad to
have you before the committee.
STATEMENT OF MARK REY, UNDER SECRETARY FOR NATURAL RESOURCES
AND ENVIRONMENT, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
Mr. Rey. Thank you.
The balance of our joint statement reviews some of the
recent cost containment assessments, as well as summarizes the
agency's response to the recommendations by the various
parties. I will summarize those quickly and then announce some
additional cost containment initiatives that we are putting in
place today.
The National Academy of Public Administration produced six
reports on wildfire cost containment between 2001 and 2004. Our
Departments have taken seven actions to address their
recommendations, including the formation of an inter-agency
coordinating body, the Wildland Fire Leadership Council.
Another of their recommendations resulted in a 10-year strategy
and implementation plan released in 2002 which was developed
collaboratively by our Departments and the Western Governors'
Association. That plan was updated last December and I want to
thank the Western Governors in particular for their cooperation
in updating and improving that plan as we have learned from the
experience since its first implementation 4 years previously.
Among the things that the Wildland Fire Leadership Council
did was to provide an August 2004 report entitled ``Large Fire
Suppression Costs and Strategies for Containment.'' The
Departments are taking an aggressive approach to responding to
the recommendations, including 11 separate actions, among them,
as are summarized in our testimony, the creation of a
comptroller position within the Forest Service to focus on cost
containment and large fire strategic and tactical decisions,
the appointment of an independent review panel, coordinated by
the Brookings Institution, to conduct cost assessments on fires
with suppression expenses exceeding $10 million.
The Government Accountability Office has issued two reports
of note: one in May 2006 involving wildland fire suppression
and the need for additional guidance on cost sharing between
Federal and non-Federal entities. To respond to this
recommendation, the Departments are working with States through
the Wildland Fire Leadership Council on a master cooperative
agreement template to be used nationwide and a consistent
approach for determining when a particular cost share method is
most appropriate.
A second GAO report in January 2005 entitled ``Wildland
Fire Management: Important Progress Has Been Made, but
Challenges Remain,'' resulted in a GAO recommendation for USDA
and DOI to develop a cohesive fuel strategy that identifies the
options and funding needed to address wildland fire problems.
The Departments issued a cohesive fuel strategy late this past
year to set forth priorities for fuel reduction projects to
guide investments in reducing the risk of catastrophic wildland
fire.
Finally, as part of USDA's ongoing effort to contain
wildland fire suppression costs and increase program
accountability, the Forest Service requested that the USDA
Office of Inspector General evaluate agency controls over these
costs. The OIG report, which you will hear about shortly from
the Inspector General, outlines 18 recommendations. The Forest
Service has concurred with all of the findings and
recommendations and stated that the recommendations will assist
the agency as it continues to improve management efficiencies.
In the wake of these challenges and the critical need to
improve cost effectiveness, a group of Forest Service line
officers and regional fire directors met in November 2006 and
developed a set of significant wildfire cost containment
measures working off of both the Inspector General's report and
earlier reports. The most important actions involved in these
recommendations include the following five:
First, the adoption of appropriate management response as a
tactical strategy. The appropriate management response was
first articulated in the 2001 update of the Federal wildland
fire management policy. This approach provides risk-informed
fire protection by introducing the concept of managing wildland
fire in relationship to the risks that the incident poses. If a
wildland fire has potential benefits to natural resources and
poses a relatively low risk to impact other valued assets, the
fire would receive a lower intensity suppression effort. The
Forest Service has developed a draft guidebook that presents a
strategy to implement this approach.
Second, the Forest Service Chief will designate an
individual with access to a support team to provide oversight
on fires of national significance and assist local units to
collaborate with DOI on DOI lands.
Third, national resources such as smoke jumpers, hot shot
crews, and helicopters will be treated as national assets and
moved to areas and incidents based on predicted services and on
planning levels. This will create a more centralized and
flexible management of these response resources and more
efficient use of them in the conduct of a fire season.
Fourth, aviation resources will be managed more effectively
to reduce their high cost. A full-time national helicopter
coordinator will be selected to provide oversight for the
assignment and positioning of helicopters. Helicopter
management will be centralized. It is a national resource. And
the Forest Service will attempt to shift more to exclusive use
versus more expensive ``call when needed'' contracts for
helicopters.
Fifth and finally, efforts will be made to maintain our
initial success--initial attack success, while reducing the
dependence on severity funding. The Forest Service will require
lower thresholds for the approval of severity funding to be
elevated for approval by the Chief. National shared resources
will be prepositioned whenever possible in geographic areas
where fire risk is the greatest during the fire season.
So those will be five new cost containment initiatives that
will begin during the 2007 fire season.
In conclusion, much progress has been made and much, much
more remains to be made. As Ms. Hatfield indicated, over the
last 3 years the cost of suppression per acre and the cost per
large fire has been flat, that is lower, given the increases
caused by inflation. But given the fact that we are in an
extended drought cycle and given the fact that upwards of two-
thirds of the houses built in the United States annually are
being built in the wildland-urban interface, the real question
is whether we can slow the rate of increase, not see these
costs decreasing overall for the foreseeable future until we
get a greater amount of fuels treatment done on the ground.
That itself is being done. As Ms. Hatfield indicated, over
the past 4 years we have treated upwards of over 20 million
acres. By the end of this year we will be closer to 25 million
acres, an area the geographic size of the State of Ohio. But
there are still many more acres that need to be treated before
we get to the point where because of those treatments we would
see a significant decrease in the cost of fire suppression.
With that, we would be happy to defer the balance of the
statement.
[The joint prepared statement of Ms. Hatfield and Mr. Rey
follows:]
Prepared Joint Statement of Mark Rey, Under Secretary for Natural
Resources and Environment, Department of Agriculture and Nina Rose
Hatfield, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Business Management and Wildland
Fire, Department of the Interior
INTRODUCTION
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, thank you for the
opportunity to appear before you to provide the Administration's view
concerning wildland fire suppression cost containment. As the
Department of the Interior (DOI) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA) work closely together in fire management, the two Departments
are providing a joint statement.
Large fire events are costly, and both Congress and the
Administration have repeatedly expressed their concerns about rising
fire suppression costs. Our Departments share these concerns and are
committed to reducing these costs. Over the last several years, various
studies and assessments dedicated to fire suppression costs have been
conducted by the National Academy of Public Administration, the
Wildland Fire Leadership Council, the Government Accountability Office
(GAO), and most recently, by the USDA Office of Inspector General (OIG)
in its ``Audit Report--Forest Service Large Fire Suppression Costs.''
We welcome these assessments, and offer this testimony today to
describe the current situation, the progress already made, and the
measures we are taking to tackle this important issue.
THE 2006 FIRE SEASON
The end of the 2005 fire season led directly into the 2006 fire
season without the slowdown that typically occurs during the winter
season. From November 2005 through April 2006. extremely low humidity,
persistent drought conditions, and winds contributed to the ignition of
fires through Texas and Oklahoma as well as Colorado, Missouri and New
Mexico. This contributed to an unprecedented quantity of acreage
burned, with 14 fires topping 100,000 acres in size, five located on
National Forests, seven in Bureau of Land Management Districts, and two
in State jurisdictions. In 2006, the acres burned were 131 percent
greater than the acres burned in 2000, almost 1 million acres greater
than 2005; and 65 percent greater than the ten-year average.
Last year, the U.S. Forest Service spent over $1.5 billion on all
fire suppression and nearly $400 million on 20 of the largest fires,
while DOI spent approximately $424 million on all fire suppression. In
the 2006 calendar year, the wildland fires across all jurisdictions
totaled over 96,000 incidents, burning almost 9.9 million acres. Of
those 9.9 million acres burned, approximately 5 million acres were on
Federal lands and approximately 4.9 million acres were on non-Federal
lands. We are pleased, that even in the face of the largest fire season
on record, we achieved nearly 98% initial attack success, a rate
comparable to less severe years. Of those fires not contained by
initial attack, approximately 26 percent exceeded the average cost as
determined by a stratified cost index for large Forest Service fires.
Although the 2006 fire season had one of the highest number of fire
starts in a single day (548), an extraordinary number of lightning
caused fires (over 16,000), and one of the highest number of large
fires at one time in nearly every region of the country, it also
resulted in significantly fewer dwellings and other structures
destroyed--750 homes lost in 2006 (240 homes during the March fires in
Texas and Oklahoma) compared to 835 home lost in 2002 and over 4500
homes lost in 2003.
Since 2001, the Departments have reduced hazardous fuels on nearly
20 million acres, 16 million acres through hazardous fuels reduction
programs and approximately 4 million acres of landscape restoration
accomplished through other land management activities.
Our focused effort to remove accumulation of hazardous fuels on our
Federal lands is having a positive effect on the land and is lowering
the risk of property damage. In addition, the Departments have paid
attention to cost controls and are finding ways to operate more
efficiently. Based on a historical analysis of cost per fire and acre
(FY 1995-2004), Forest Service large fire suppression costs over the
past 3 years are essentially flat or below the 10-year average and,
while the 2006 numbers are above the average based on the stratified
cost index, we are encouraged by the progress of our efforts to apply
cost-saving measures. With the cost of many firefighting resources such
as aviation and other equipment increasing faster than the rate of
inflation, this represents an increase in productivity and cost control
associated with suppression operations. We face challenges ahead to
control total suppression costs, but we are fully committed to the
implementation of additional management efficiencies and improved
performance accountability. We fully expect to see our future cost/
productivity trends for individual large fires continue to improve.
WEATHER, WILDLAND URBAN INTERFACE AND WOOD
Multiple factors contribute to the expense of fighting fires. These
factors include weather, fuel type, terrain, location with respect to
the wildland urban interface (WUI) and other highly valued landscapes,
and managerial decisions made before and during fire incidents. In
addition, changing temperatures and prolonged drought across many
portions of the West, an expansion of the WUI and an increase in the
number of people living in the WUI, and continued accumulation of wood
fiber, or biomass, on our public forests requiring treatment are
converging to increase the risk of catastrophic loss from wildland
fires. In combination, these trends present continuing challenges in
our efforts to decrease the number and cost of fire incidents.
Over the last few years, we have reported regularly to Congress on
these challenges. The 2005 Quadrennial Fire and Fuels Review by DOI and
USDA examined the growth of the WUI, the area where structures and
other human developments meet or intermingle with undeveloped wildland.
The review found that 8.4 million new homes were added to the WUI in
the 1990s, representing 60 percent of the new homes constructed in the
United States. The rate of growth is triple the rate of construction
outside of the WUI. The review illustrates the challenge of addressing
wildland fire costs in land areas, such as locations in the WUI where
fire suppression is inherently more expensive.
Another challenge is addressing the accumulation of flammable
biomass in our forests, a major cause of fire risk. The Departments
have worked aggressively to reduce the amount of hazardous fuels on
Federal lands and restore the health of our public forests and
rangelands, utilizing the authorities provided under the President's
Healthy Forests Initiative and the Healthy Forests Restoration Act to
expedite action. In 2006, more than half of the total acres were
treated inside the WUI. We will maintain this emphasis with a goal to
treat approximately 2 million acres in the WUI through the hazardous
fuels reduction program in 2007.
Reports from GAO and USDA OIG focus on managing fire suppression in
the WUI and on cost sharing for those activities between Federal and
non-Federal entities. These reports accurately highlight the
complexities associated with large, multi jurisdictional fires,
especially those that threaten the WUI. Protecting human life and
safety is our top priority; hence, fires in or adjacent to areas
populated by homes and citizens generate a larger, more aggressive
response that includes the use of structural and wildland engines,
aircraft, and additional crews and equipment. Also, these lands tend to
fall under a mix of ownership and jurisdictions that typically involve
a response from Federal, State, county, and local entities. These
factors add up to increased complexity and costs associated with
incident response in the WUI.
Over the past 20 years, the Agencies have developed strong
relationships with State and local cooperators in wildland fire
suppression. The assistance by cooperators on Federal fires has grown,
as well as cooperative efforts to suppress fires that cross ownership
boundaries. Over time, the need to maximize efficiency and
effectiveness has required the sharing of resources to fight these
multi jurisdictional fires across the landscape. The sharing of
responsibilities, resources, and costs is often determined through
cooperative agreements among the affected entities. Local units develop
individual cost-sharing agreements for each large fire under the
umbrella of a master cooperative agreement, with the State. We
recognize the need to review existing master cooperative agreements
with our State partners and ensure consistency with the 2001 update to
the Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy. Toward this end, the
Departments are working with the States on an interagency master
cooperative agreement template to improve cost-share methods and
provide greater consistency across the country.
Costs are typically shared based on the number of acres burned in
each jurisdiction, or a combination of acres burned and the first 24
hours of support. Today, the complexity of responding to fires that
cross jurisdictions, as well as the growth of those located in the WUI,
has prompted interest in developing a different basis for cost sharing.
Both the GAO and OIG reports state that more guidance on cost-share
methods is needed so each entity's financial responsibility is clear.
The Departments also recognize the need for clarity and consistency of
cost sharing methods that will better account for the multitude of
factors that affect each incident. We look forward to continuing to
work with the States and other interested and affected entities in this
effort.
RECENT COST CONTAINMENT ASSESSMENTS
The National Academy of Public Administration
The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) produced six
reports on wildfire cost containment between 2001 and 2004. The issues
covered in these reports include: (1) improving the management
practices concerning wildfires by the National Park Service; (2)
enhancing capacity to implement Federal interagency policy; (3)
strategies for containing costs; (4) improving equipment and services
acquisition; (5) utilizing local firefighting forces; (6) and enhancing
hazard mitigation capacity. Our Departments have taken the following
actions to address the recommendations in these reports:
The National Park Service improved its risk assessment and
coordination practices.
An interagency coordinating body, the Wildland Fire
Leadership Council (WFLC), was formed and a strong
intergovernmental partnership has resulted. The Wildland Fire
Leadership Council's report on cost containment is discussed
later in this statement.
A 10-year Strategy and Implementation Plan, released in
2002, was developed collaboratively by the DOI, USDA, the
Western Governors Association as well as southern Governors,
counties and tribes. An updated Implementation Plan was
released in December 2006.
Incident business advisors have been trained and assigned to
help implement cost containment measures.
Procurement analysts have been assigned to systematically
assess alternative sources of supply for firefighting equipment
and services, as recommended in the report.
The Agencies have aggressively promoted the creation and
training of Type-3 Incident Management Teams, with the support
of the National Association of State Foresters and the
International Association of Fire Chiefs.
The Agencies aggressively promoted and provided financial
assistance toward creating fire-resistant communities and
defensible spaces through collaboration with communities and
local entities. The Agencies have worked with States to expand
community protection through Community Wildfire Protection
Plans, authorized under the Healthy Forests Restoration Act,
and the FIREWISE program.
The Agencies have established fire suppression cost levels
that require additional oversight at the regional or national
level for review, identifying and approving a strategy in the
Wildland Fire Situation Analysis.
Wildland Fire Leadership Council
In August 2004, the WFLC Strategic Issues Panel issued a report
entitled, ``Large Fire Suppression Costs: Strategies for Cost
Management.'' The report, developed by senior level managers and
administrators from Federal, State and local governments, examined 12
reports that spanned five years and included more than 300
recommendations. The report identified factors that will affect
wildfire costs for the coming decades, including forest fuels,
demographic trends, and climatic conditions, and provided
recommendations aimed at slowing the rate of such costs.
The Departments are taking an aggressive approach to the WFLC
report, emphasizing land management decisions that affect fuel loading
and resource protection, increasing the skills and numbers of local
firefighters, advancing integrated data management, and developing
metrics and accountability measures to evaluate managerial cost
effectiveness. Seven multi-agency, multi-disciplinary Cost Action Teams
(CATs) were formed by the WFLC and have completed their work. The
following provides examples of the Departments' efforts to date:
The Agencies are strengthening and improving the
availability of local resources through coordinated Federal and
State financial support. Federal and State partners are
assessing existing fire service funding programs to: (1)
determine how existing funding can be more effectively
leveraged; (2) improve coordination between the programs; (3)
improve program information flow to customers; and (4) provide
grant preparation assistance and other technical services to
rural fire departments.
The Agencies have issued guidance to incorporate
consideration of wildfire suppression costs and fuel management
efforts in land and resource management planning.
The Agencies will continue to implement initiatives that
assist in large-scale planning such as: (1) the WFLC-sponsored
burn severity mapping project; (2) LANDFIRE; (3) Fire Program
Analysis; (4) FIREWISE; (5) Community Wildfire Protection
Planning; and (6) Wildland Fire Decision Support Modeling.
The Departments are working to integrate numerous data
collection/analysis systems in order to reduce the cost of data
collection, ensure data quality, and eliminate redundancy. The
Fire Occurrence Reporting Study, which analyzed existing
information collected in Federal and State fire-reporting
systems, is scheduled for final delivery in February 2007.
Under the National Wildland Fire Enterprise Architecture
project, we are integrating resource mobilization analysis and
support systems to serve as the vehicle for a cohesive business
transformation process.
The Departments have adopted a Stratified Cost Index
performance measure that uses cost data from around the nation
to set a benchmark of average cost for a fire incident that
incorporates sensitivity to location and conditions. The Forest
Service is implementing this performance measure this year. DOI
is still compiling the necessary background data and research,
and the measure will be implemented as soon as this is
completed.
The Forest Service has created a Comptroller position to
focus on cost containment and large fire strategic and tactical
decisions.
As required by Congress, the Secretary of Agriculture has
appointed an independent review panel, coordinated by the
Brookings Institution, to conduct cost assessments on fires
with suppression expenditures exceeding $10 million.
Cost Review Teams review fires in which costs exceed $5
million in order to evaluate strategic, tactical and overall
business management decisions on the incident.
Scientific studies by the Southern and Rocky Mountain
Research Stations and the Scripps Research Institute were
conducted to determine the predictability of emergency
suppression expenditures.
The Agencies conduct ``After Action'' Reviews each Fall that
assess the effectiveness of allocation of Forest Service and
DOI fire suppression resources during high levels of fire
activity at National Multi-Agency Coordinating Group/Geographic
Area Multi-Coordinating Group postseason meetings.
Standards were developed for Local Response Organizations
(Type 3 Incident Management Teams) to enhance a community's
ability to independently manage fires.
The Government Accountability Office
Wildland Fire Suppression: Lack of Clear Guidance Raises
Concerns about Cost Sharing between Federal and
Nonfederal Entities
In May 2006, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a
report entitled, ``Wildland Fire Suppression: Lack of Clear Guidance
Raises Concerns about Cost Sharing between Federal and Nonfederal
Entities.'' The report found that there was a lack of clear guidance in
determining appropriate cost-share methods between Federal and non-
federal entities. The report's primary recommendation is that USDA and
DOI work with relevant State entities to provide more specific guidance
on when to use particular cost-sharing methods and clarify the
financial responsibilities for fires that burn or threaten to burn
across multiple jurisdictions. To respond to this recommendation, the
Departments are working with the States on a master cooperative
agreement template to use nationwide and a consistent approach for
determining when a particular cost-share method is most appropriate.
Wildland Fire Management: Important Progress Has Been Made,
but Challenges Remain to Completing a Cohesive
Strategy
In January 2005, the GAO issued a report entitled, ``Wildland Fire
Management: Important Progress Has Been Made, but Challenges Remain to
Completing a Cohesive Strategy'' (GAO-05-147). The report recommended
that USDA and DOI provide Congress with a plan outlining critical steps
and time frames for completing a cohesive strategy that identifies the
options and funding needed to address wildland fire problems. In
response, USDA and DOI have collaborated with our partners on the
following:
Cohesive Fuels Strategy: The Departments issued a Cohesive
Fuels Strategy to set forth priorities for fuels reduction
projects to guide investments in reducing risks of catastrophic
wildland fires and enhance strategically placed `defensible
space' in areas at risk.
LANDFIRE: LANDFIRE is a geospatial tool for identifying
areas across the nation at increased risk of fire due to
accumulation of fuels. The use of LANDFIRE data will improve
collaboration among Federal, State and local interests with
regard to fire and other natural resource management efforts.
Currently, the LANDFIRE project has completed mapping the
Western portion of the contiguous U.S.; the Eastern portion of
the contiguous U.S. is scheduled to be completed by 2008.
Alaska and Hawaii will be completed by 2009.
Fire Program Analysis (FPA): The Fire Program Analysis (FPA)
System is a tool to provide managers with a common interagency
approach to fire management planning and budgeting. FPA will
enable managers to better evaluate the effectiveness of
alternative fire management strategies in order to meet land
management goals and objectives. FPA will reflect fire
objectives and performance measures for the full scope of fire
management activities. The prototype is scheduled to be
delivered in the summer of 2007 with system delivery expected
in 2008.
The USDA Office of the Inspector General
As part of USDA's ongoing effort to contain wildfire suppression
costs and increase the program's accountability, Forest Service senior
management requested that the USDA Office of the Inspector General,
Western Region (OIG) evaluate agency controls over these costs. In
November 2006, the OIG released their ``Audit Report--Forest Service
Large Fire Suppression Costs.'' The OIG found that the Forest Service
could strengthen the cost-effectiveness of its fire fighting without
sacrificing safety by: (1) improving equitable cost-share of wildfire
suppression costs with nonfederal entities; (2) increasing wildland
fire use to reduce forest vegetation and underbrush that may fuel
future fires; and (3) establishing controls to assess performance of
line officers and incident commanders in controlling costs.
OIG outlines 18 recommendations in its Audit Report. On November
16, 2006, the Forest Service provided an official response, to the
report. The Forest Service concurred with all of the findings and
recommendations and stated that the recommendations will assist the
agency as it continues to improve its management efficiencies to save
taxpayers' dollars while providing safe and effective suppression of
wildfires. The Forest Service response includes a specific commitment
and an estimated completion date for each of the recommendations in the
report. The Audit report and Forest Service response is attached to
this testimony.
MANAGEMENT EFFICIENCY PROPOSALS FOR LARGE FIRE COST CONTAINMENT
Large fire costs have been a persistent challenge for the
Departments and threaten to compromise the achievement of other key
areas of our missions. Multiple internal and external reviews have been
conducted, including those mentioned above, and have generated over 300
recommendations to curb increasing suppression costs.
In the wake of these challenges and the critical need to constantly
improve cost-effectiveness, a group of Forest Service Line Officers,
regional Fire Directors and Regional Foresters met in November, 2006
and developed a set of significant wildfire cost-containment measures
to further enhance our ability to efficiently manage suppression costs.
This effort resulted in a list of management efficiencies which focus
on leadership, operations, aviation and general management practices.
The Forest Service is moving forward to implement the list of
management efficiencies; DOI is reviewing them with the intent to
address them on an interagency basis, as appropriate. We anticipate
that some of these measures will be implemented in 2007, while others
will be implemented over the long-term. The most significant actions
include:
1. Appropriate Management Response
The Appropriate Management Response (AMR) was articulated in the
2001 update of the Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy. This
approach provides risk informed fire protection by introducing the
concept of managing wildland fire in relationship to the risk that the
incident poses. If a wildland fire has potential benefits to natural
resources and poses a relatively low risk to impact other valued
assets, the fire would receive a lower intensity suppression effort.
Conversely, if a fire incident is determined to pose high risk to
property or community high suppression efforts would be applied. The
approach utilizes risk management and tools such as probability data
and analyses to inform rigorous and systematic ways to reach decisions
that allocate resources on the basis of risk posed by the wildfire and
the strategy used by managers to address it. The Forest Service has
developed a draft guidebook that presents a coherent strategy to
implement this approach. DOI is reviewing this guidebook and will work
with Forest Service on interagency implementation.
2. Forest Service Chief's Principal Representative
The Forest Service Chief will designate an individual with access
to a support team to provide oversight on fires of national
significance and assistance to local units and will collaborate with
the DOI on DOI lands. The individual will be highly experienced in
wildfire management, and the team will have knowledge and capability
with decision-support tools. These changes will immediately provide for
experienced decision-making that should reduce costs on large fires.
3. National Shared Resources
National resources such as smoke jumpers, hot shot crews and
helicopters will be treated as national assets and moved to areas and
incidents based on Predictive Services and on Planning Levels. This
will create a more centralized and flexible management of these
response resources. Funding and decision-making from the national level
will ensure consistency across regions, flexibility in the assignment
of resources and eliminate concentration of resources in a geographic
area that costs time and money.
4. Aviation Resource Cost Management
Aviation resources will be managed more effectively to reduce their
high cost. A full-time National helicopter coordinator will be selected
to provide oversight for the assignment and positioning of helicopters.
Helicopter management will be centralized as a national resource. The
Forest Service will attempt to shift more to ``exclusive use'' versus
``call when needed'' contracts for helicopters. This will increase
preparedness costs initially, but is expected to greatly reduce large
fire suppression cost with potential saving of tens of millions of
dollars per year. We will pursue longer term aviation contracts for all
aviation resources with increased performance-based contracting. DOI
also is pursuing strategies to reduce its costs.
5. Initial Attack and Severity Funding
Efforts will be made to maintain our initial attack success while
reducing the dependence on severity funding. The Forest Service will
require lower thresholds for the approval of severity funding to be
elevated for approval by the Chief. National Shared Resources will be
pre-positioned whenever possible in geographic areas where fire risk is
the greatest during the fire season. The Forest Service and DOI
agencies will continue to submit a coordinated severity request so as
to not duplicate effort or expense.
The Departments take the issue of large fire cost containment very
seriously and are actively moving forward to implement these important
changes. A comprehensive list of management efficiencies has been
developed to guide action over the short, intermediate and long-term
and to produce results. The Forest Service and DOI are working together
in collaboration and our staff is committed to action. The Forest
Service Chief has conducted an all-day meeting and shared his intent to
execute action with Regional Foresters, and, this week, Incident and
Area Commanders of the Incident Management Team have met to discuss the
implementation of the measures.
CONCLUSION
We appreciate the recommendations provided in these recent cost-
containment assessments. We expect that the management improvements
implemented and underway will enable managers to be better prepared for
wildfires; help managers to make better decisions during firefighting
operations, and provide managers with the tools necessary to analyze,
understand and manage fire suppression costs. While the factors of
drought, fuels build-up in our forests and increasing development in
fire prone areas have the potential to keep the number of incidents and
total cost of wildfire suppression high of some time to come, we are
positive about our direction to address wildland fire suppression costs
and are committed to action. We believe that the measures discussed
today promise to expand efficiency and reduce suppression costs. We
look forward to continued collaboration with our Federal, State, local,
Tribal, and other non-Federal partners to address our shared goal of
effectively managing wildfire suppression costs.
Thank you for the opportunity to discuss these issues. We would be
happy to answer any questions that you might have.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Next is Robin Nazzaro, who is the Director of Natural
Resources and Environment for the Government Accountability
Office. Thank you for being here.
Senator Domenici. Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Yes, Senator Domenici?
Senator Domenici. I am sorry to bother. But I wanted to
ask, Secretary, could you get back to the live mike for just a
moment? You tell us about all these kind of problems that we
have about the growing number of houses that are in the way, so
as to speak, that were not there. And then you end up saying we
are doing a pretty good job.
But are we really doing something significant to change
this growth that is obviously going to cause fires that we did
not plan on, that are going to be hard to put out, and they are
going to ravish the public use domain just because they are
tender, they burn and they are big burners. Can you address
that for us? What are we going to do about it?
Mr. Rey. As to the growth of houses in the wildland-urban
interface, that has not been a Federal responsibility.
Senator Domenici. But I am asking. You are a professional.
Who is doing what about it?
Mr. Rey. I think that there has been very little done in
restricting the construction in fire-dependent ecosystems. We
are today in that regard where we were in flood plain
development 15 or 20 years ago. That is something that State
and local governments are going to need to do. If we were to
work with them more intensively on anything, that would bring
us the best financial benefit, I think, in reducing
firefighting costs.
But the ideal today in the fastest growing region of the
country, which is the Intermountain West, is to have a nice
house out in the woods. That is why people are moving to
Colorado, to Arizona, to all of the fastest growing States in
the country. And all of that growth is occurring, or much of
it, most of it, is occurring in the wildland-urban interface.
We can reduce fire risk by cooperative programs like Fire Wise,
but every new subdivision presents a new challenge and
inherently more expensive fire suppression costs if we are
going to defend that subdivision.
The Chairman. All right.
Senator Domenici. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Ms. Nazzaro.
STATEMENT OF ROBIN M. NAZZARO, DIRECTOR, NATURAL RESOURCES AND
ENVIRONMENT, GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
Ms. Nazzaro. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the
committee.
The Chairman. Let me just urge, folks, if you can give us
the summary of your comments, we will include the full
statement in the record. That will be best. Thanks.
Ms. Nazzaro. Good. I am happy to be here today to discuss
the key actions we believe Federal wildland fire management
agencies need to complete to help contain the rising costs of
preparing for and responding to fires. I will skip all the
background section because I think you certainly understand the
magnitude of the problems here. I will go right to the findings
from our recent reports plus the preliminary findings from work
under way for this committee, which together summarize the key
wildland fire management weaknesses and critical actions that
we believe the agencies need to complete if they are to
effectively contain the rising costs of responding to wildland
fires.
Specifically, we believe the agencies need to: First,
develop a cohesive strategy that identifies the options and
associated funding to reduce fuels and address wildland fire
problems. In 1999, to address the problem of excess fuels and
their potential to increase the severity of wildland fires and
the cost of suppression efforts, we recommended that such a
cohesive strategy be developed. In 2005 and 2006, because the
agencies had not yet developed such a strategy, we reiterated
the need for a cohesive strategy and broadened our
recommendations' focus to better address the interrelated
nature of fuel reduction efforts and wildland fire response.
As an interim step, we also recommended that the agencies
develop a tactical plan outlining the steps and time frames
needed for completing a cohesive strategy. Such a strategy and
plan would be helpful to the Congress and to the agencies in
making informed decisions about effective and affordable long-
term approaches to addressing the Nation's wildland fire
problem. Although the agencies concurred with our
recommendations, neither a cohesive strategy nor a tactical
plan has been developed.
Second, the agencies need to clarify their guidance for
sharing wildland fire suppression costs with non-Federal
entities. In 2006, to help address the rising costs of
responding to fires that threaten both Federal and non-Federal
lands and resources, we recommended that the Federal agencies,
working with relevant State agencies, clarify the financial
responsibility for these fires and provide more specific
guidance as to when particular cost-sharing methods should be
used. The method used to share the costs of suppressing a
wildland fire among responsible entities can have significant
financial consequences for the entities involved, potentially
amounting to millions of dollars. The need for clarity about
how to share the rising costs of wildland fire protection is
becoming more acute as increasing numbers of homes are built in
areas at risk from wildland fires. Federal agencies are
updating their guidance on possible methods for sharing costs
between Federal and non-Federal entities and on the
circumstances when each method typically would be used. It is
unclear, however, how the agencies will ensure that such
guidance is followed.
Third, the agencies need to establish clear goals,
strategies, and performance measures to help contain wildland
fire costs. Although the agencies have taken certain steps to
help contain wildland fire costs, the effectiveness of these
steps may be limited because agencies have not established
clear cost containment goals for the wildland fire program,
including how containing costs should be considered in relation
to other wildland fire program goals such as protecting lives,
resources, and property; strategies to achieve these goals; or
effective performance measures to track their progress.
Each of these efforts plays an important role in addressing
the issue of containing wildland fire costs, but none of them
alone can solve the problem. The Federal Government is
expending substantial effort and billions of dollars in
attempting to address the problem. The agencies, however,
despite promising to do so, still cannot articulate how the
steps being taken fit together to form a comprehensive and
cohesive strategy to contain costs or to address the many
wildland fire management problems we and others have reported
over the past 7 years.
For cost containment efforts to be effective, the agencies
need to integrate cost containment goals with the other goals
of the wildland fire program, recognizing the trade-offs that
will be needed to meet desired goals within the context of
fiscal constraints. Further, because the agencies' efforts to
reduce fuels and prepare for and suppress wildland fires are
interrelated, a cohesive strategy is fundamental if the
agencies are to contain costs.
Mr. Chairman, that concludes my prepared statement. I would
be pleased to answer any questions you or other members of the
committee may have.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Nazzaro follows:]
Prepared Statement of Robin M. Nazzaro, Director, Natural Resources and
Environment, Government Accountability Office
WHY GAO DID THIS STUDY
Over the past two decades, the number of acres burned by wildland
fires has increased, often threatening human lives, property, and
ecosystems. The cost of responding to wildland fires has also grown,
especially as more homes are built in or near. wildlands, an area
called the wildland-urban interface. Past management practices,
including a concerted federal policy in the 20th century of suppressing
fires to protect communities and ecosystems, unintentionally resulted
in steady accumulation of dense vegetation that can fuel large,
intense, and often costly wildland fires.
GAO was asked to identify actions that federal wildland fire
agencies need to take to help contain federal wildland fire
expenditures. GAO has identified these actions in three of its reports
addressing fuel reduction and cost-sharing efforts and as part of an
ongoing review of federal agencies' efforts to con wildland fire
preparedness and suppression costs for this committee. Specifically,
GAO focused on examining agencies' efforts to (1) reduce accumulated
fuels and address wildland fire problems, (2) share with nonfederal
entities the costs of responding to multijurisdictional fires, and (3)
contain the costs of preparing for and responding to wildland fires.
Wildland Fire Management
Lack of a Cohesive Strategy Hinders Agencies' Cost-Containment Efforts
WHAT GAO FOUND
Over the past 7 years, GAO has recommended a number of actions
federal wildland fire agencies should take to improve their management
of wildland fire activities, actions that could also help contain the
rising federal expenditures for responding to wildland fires. These
agencies--the Forest Service within the Department of Agriculture and
land management agencies within the Department of the Interior--
concurred with GAO's recommendations but have not completed, or in some
cases have not yet begun, needed actions. GAO's ongoing review of
federal agencies' efforts to contain wildland fire preparedness and
suppression costs has also identified other actions that may be needed.
Specifically, the agencies need to:
Develop a cohesive strategy that identifies the options and
associated funding to reduce fuels and address wildland fire
problems. In 1999, to address the problem of excess fuels and
their potential to increase the severity of wildland fires and
the cost of suppression efforts, GAO recommended that a
cohesive strategy be developed that identified the available
long-term options and associated funding for reducing these
fuels. In 2005 and 2006, because the agencies had not yet
developed one, GAO reiterated the need for such a strategy but
broadened its focus to better address the interrelated nature
of fuel reduction efforts and wildland fire response. GAO also
recommended that, as an interim step, the agencies develop a
tactical plan outlining the steps and time frames needed for
completing a cohesive strategy. As of January 2007, the
agencies had not developed either a cohesive strategy or a
tactical plan.
Clarify their guidance for sharing wildland fire suppression
costs with nonfederal entities. In 2006, to address the rising
costs of responding to fires that threaten both federal and
nonfederal lands and resources, GAO recommended that the
federal agencies provide more specific guidance as to when
particular cost-sharing methods should be used. The cost-
sharing method used can have significant financial consequences
for the entities involved--potentially amounting to millions of
dollars. As of January 2007, the agencies were updating their
guidance on possible cost-sharing methods and when each
typically would be used, but it is unclear how the agencies
will ensure that the guidance is followed.
Establish clear goals, strategies, and performance measures
to help contain wildland fire costs. Preliminary findings from
GAO's ongoing work indicate that the effectiveness of agencies'
efforts to contain costs may be limited because the agencies
have not clearly defined their cost-containment goals,
developed a strategy for achieving those goals, or developed
related performance measures. For these efforts to be
effective, the agencies need to integrate cost-containment
goals with the other goals of the wildland fire program--such
as protecting life and property--and to recognize that trade-
offs will be needed to meet desired goals within the context of
fiscal constraints.
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:
I am pleased to be here today to discuss the key actions that we
believe federal wildland fire management agencies--the Forest Service
within the Department of Agriculture and four agencies within the
Department of the Interior--need to complete to help contain the rising
costs of preparing for and responding to wildland fires. Increasing
wildland fire threats to communities and ecosystems, combined with
rising costs of addressing those threats--trends that we and others
have reported on for many years--have not abated. On average, the
acreage burned annually by wildland fires from 2000 to 2005 was 70
percent greater than the acreage burned annually during the 1990s.
Appropriations for wildland fire management activities tripled from
about $1 billion in fiscal year 1999 to nearly $3 billion in fiscal
year 2005. Although the agencies are still refining their data, 2006
was an especially severe year, with almost 10 million acres burned and
what are likely to be the highest federal fire suppression expenditures
ever. A number of factors have contributed to more-severe fires and
corresponding increases in expenditures for wildland fire management
activities. These factors include an accumulation of fuels due to past
fire suppression policies; severe weather and drought in some areas of
the country; and growing numbers of homes built in or near wildlands,
an area often called the wildland-urban interface. In light of the
federal deficit and the long-term fiscal challenges facing the nation,
attention has increasingly focused on ways to contain these growing
expenditures and to ensure that the agencies' wildland fire activities
are appropriate and carried out in a cost-effective and efficient
manner.
My testimony today includes findings from three of our recent
reports, plus preliminary findings from work under way, which together
summarize key wildland fire management weaknesses we have identified
over the last 7 years, as well as critical actions the agencies need to
complete if they are to effectively contain the rising costs of
responding to wildland fires. Specifically, my testimony focuses on
three issues: the agencies' efforts to (1) reduce fuels and address
wildland fire problems,\1\ (2) share with nonfederal entities the costs
of responding to fires that burn or threaten to burn multiple
jurisdictions,\2\ and (3) contain federal expenditures of preparing for
and responding to wildland fires. To evaluate these issues, we reviewed
selected reports that we have issued since 2000, as well as those by
other federal agencies or outside organizations, that assessed federal
wildland fire management. We reviewed pertinent agency plans, policies,
procedures, reports, and financial documents, and we interviewed
federal and nonfederal officials to identify steps federal agencies
have taken to address these areas and the challenges remaining. We
performed our work in accordance with generally accepted government
auditing standards from May 2006 through January 2007.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ GAO, Wildland Fire Management: Update on Federal Agency Efforts
to Develop a Cohesive Strategy to Address Wildland Fire Threats, GAO-
06-671R (Washington, D.C.: May 1, 2006); Wildland Fire Management:
Important Progress Has Been Made, but Challenges Remain to Completing a
Cohesive Strategy, GAO-05-147 (Washington, D.C.: Jan. 14, 2005).
\2\ GAO, Wildland Fire Suppression: Lack of Clear Guidance Raises
Concerns about Cost Sharing between Federal and Nonfederal Entities,
GAO-06-570 (Washington, D.C.: May 30, 2006).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUMMARY
In summary, federal wildland fire management agencies need to take
a number of actions to strengthen their overall management of the
wildland fire program, actions that could lead to more effective and
efficient use of scarce resources and help the agencies to better
contain costs. While we have made a number of recommendations over the
last 7 years to improve wildland fire management--and agencies have
largely concurred with these recommendations--the agencies have made
limited progress in implementing the needed changes. Further, our
preliminary work on federal agencies' efforts to contain wildland fire
preparedness and suppression costs has also identified other actions
that may be needed. Specifically, we believe that the agencies need to:
Develop a cohesive strategy that identifies the options and
associated funding to reduce fuels and address wildland fire
problems. In 1999, to address the problem of excess fuels and
their potential to increase the severity of wildland fires and
cost of suppression efforts, we recommended that a cohesive
strategy be developed that identified the available long-term
options and associated funding for reducing fuels. By 2005, the
agencies had yet to develop such a strategy, and we reiterated
the need for a cohesive strategy and broadened our
recommendation's focus to better address the interrelated
nature of fuel reduction efforts and wildland fire response. We
also recommended that the agencies develop a tactical plan
outlining the steps and time frames needed for completing a
cohesive strategy. Such a strategy and plan would be helpful to
the Congress and the agencies in making informed decisions
about effective and affordable long-term approaches to
addressing the nation's wildland fire problems. Although the
agencies concurred with our recommendations, as of January
2007, neither a cohesive strategy nor a tactical plan had been
developed.
Clarify their guidance for sharing wildland fire suppression
costs with nonfederal entities. In 2006, to help address the
rising costs of responding to fires that threaten both federal
and nonfederal lands and resources, we recommended that the
federal agencies, working with relevant state entities, clarify
the financial responsibility for these fires and provide more
specific guidance as to when particular cost-sharing methods
should be used. The method used to share the costs of
suppressing a wildland fire among responsible entities can have
significant financial consequences for the entities involved--
potentially amounting to millions of dollars. The need for
clarity about how to share the rising costs of wildland fire
protection is becoming more acute as increasing numbers of
homes are built in areas at risk from wildland fires. As of
January 2007, the agencies were updating guidance on possible
methods for sharing costs between federal and nonfederal
entities and the circumstances when each method typically would
be used. It is unclear, however, how the agencies will ensure
that such guidance is followed.
Establish clear goals, strategies, and performance measures
to help contain wildland fire costs. Preliminary findings from
our work under way for this committee indicate that, although
the agencies have taken certain steps to help contain wildland
fire costs, the effectiveness of these steps may be limited
because agencies have not established clear cost-containment
goals, strategies to achieve those goals, or effective
performance measures to track their progress.
Each of these efforts plays an important role in addressing the
issue of containing wildland fire costs, but none of them alone can
solve the problem. For cost-containment efforts to be effective, the
agencies need to integrate cost-containment goals with the other goals
of the wildland fire program--such as protecting life, resources, and
property--and to recognize that trade-offs will be needed to meet
desired goals within the context of fiscal constraints. Further,
because the agencies' efforts to reduce fuels and to prepare for and
suppress wildland fires are interrelated, the cohesive strategy we
previously recommended for responding to wildland fires is fundamental
if agencies are to contain costs.
BACKGROUND
Wildland fires ignited by lightning are both natural and inevitable
and play an important ecological role on the nation's landscape. In
addition to maintaining habitat diversity, releasing soil nutrients,
and causing the seeds of fire-dependent species to germinate, fire
periodically removes undergrowth, small trees, and vegetation that can
otherwise build up and intensify subsequent fires. However, various
human land use and management practices, including decades of
suppressing wildland fires, have altered the normal frequency of fires
in many forest and rangeland ecosystems, leading to
uncharacteristically dense vegetation and atypical fire patterns in
some places. At the same time, more homes and communities are being
built in areas where fires can occur, increasing risks to human life,
property, and infrastructure. Experts estimate that between 1990 and
2000, 60 percent of all new housing units in the United States were
built in the wildland-urban interface, and by 2000, about 38 percent of
housing units overall were located in the wildland-urban interface.\3\
Recent media reports indicate that this trend of growth in the
wildland-urban interface continues. Finally, agency analyses indicate
that climate change and related drought may also be responsible for
significant increases in the occurrence of, and costs of responding to,
wildland fire.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ The wildland-urban interface is defined as the area where
structures and other human developments meet or intermingle with
undeveloped wildland.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Increases in the size and severity of wildland fires, and in the
cost of fighting them, have led federal agencies to fundamentally
reexamine their approach to wildland fire management. For decades,
federal agencies aggressively suppressed wildland fires and were
generally successful in decreasing the number of acres burned. In some
areas of the country, however, rather than eliminating severe wildland
fires, decades of suppression disrupted ecological cycles and began to
change the structure and makeup of forests and rangelands, increasing
the land's susceptibility to fire. Increasingly, the agencies have
recognized the key role that fire plays in many ecosystems and the
utility of fire itself as a tool in managing forests and watersheds.
The agencies worked together to develop the Federal Wildland Fire
Management Policy in 1995, which for the first time formally recognized
the essential role that fire plays in maintaining natural systems. This
policy was subsequently reaffirmed and updated in 2001. In addition to
noting the negative effects of past wildland fire suppression, the
policy also recognized that continued development in the wildland-urban
interface has placed more values at risk from wildland fire while
increasing the complexity and cost of wildland fire suppression
operations.
To help address these trends, the policy directed agencies to
consider management objectives and the values at risk when determining
how or whether to suppress a wildland fire. Under this approach, termed
``appropriate management response,'' the agencies may fight fires that
threaten communities or other highly valued areas more aggressively
than they fight fires in remote areas or in areas where natural fuel
reduction would be beneficial. In some cases, the agencies may simply
monitor the fire, or take only limited suppression actions, to ensure
that it continues to pose little threat to valued resources. Under
current interagency policy, local federal units must develop land
management and fire management plans that document approved fire
management strategies for each acre of burnable land and other
important information about how the land will be managed, including
local values at risk, needed local fuel reduction, and rehabilitation
actions. Once a fire starts, land management and fire management
specialists are to identify and implement the appropriate management
response, in accordance with the unit's approved land and fire
management plans.
Responding to wildland fires--which can bum across federal and
nonfederal jurisdictions--often requires coordination and collaboration
among federal, tribal, state, and local firefighting entities to
effectively protect lives, homes, and resources. Five federal
agencies--the Forest Service within the Department of Agriculture and
the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and
Wildlife Service, and National Park Service within the Department of
the Interior--fight wildland fires. These federal agencies work
together with nonfederal firefighting entities to share personnel,
equipment, and supplies and to fight fires, regardless of which
entities have jurisdiction over the burning lands. Agreements developed
and agreed to by cooperating entities, commonly referred to as master
agreements, govern cooperative fire protection efforts and include
general provisions for sharing firefighting costs among responsible
entities.
AGENCIES NEED A COHESIVE STRATEGY TO ADDRESS WILDLAND FIRE PROBLEMS
Agencies need a cohesive strategy that identifies the available
long-term options and associated funding for reducing excess vegetation
and responding to wildland fires if the agencies and the Congress are
to make informed decisions about an effective and affordable long-term
approach for addressing problems that have been decades in the making.
We first recommended that the agencies develop such a strategy for
addressing fuels in 1999. After we evaluated a number of related
wildland fire management issues, we reiterated our recommendation in
2005 and 2006 but also recognized that a comprehensive solution needs
to address not only reducing fuels but also an overall response to
wildland fire. To develop an effective overall strategy, agencies need
to complete several key tasks, which address weaknesses we previously
identified.
Our 2005 report summarized several weaknesses in the federal
government's management of fuel reduction and related wildland fire
programs and identified a number of actions to address these
weaknesses.\4\ Specifically, these weaknesses included the following:
the agencies lacked basic data, such as the extent and location of
lands needing fuel reduction; the agencies needed to identify and
prioritize fuel reduction projects; many federal land management units
did not have fire management plans that met agency requirements
designed to restore fire's natural role in ecosystems consistent with
human health and safety; and the agencies were unable to assess the
extent to which they were reducing wildland fire risks, to establish
meaningful fuel reduction performance measures, or to determine the
cost-effectiveness of these efforts because they lacked needed data. We
also identified a number of tasks the agencies needed to complete to
develop a cohesive strategy. These tasks included finishing data
systems that are needed to identify the extent, severity, and location
of wildland fire threats in our national forests and rangelands;
updating local fire management plans to better specify the actions
needed to effectively address these threats; and assessing the cost-
effectiveness and affordability of options for reducing fuels and
responding to wildland fire problems.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ GAO-05-147.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The agencies have made some progress on the three primary tasks we
identified as important to developing a wildland fire management
strategy, although concerns have been raised about when or whether the
agencies will successfully complete them. More specifically,
LANDFIRE, a geospatial data and modeling system, is being
designed to assist the agencies in identifying the extent,
severity, and location of wildland fire threats to the nation's
communities and ecosystems. LANDFIRE data are nearly complete
for most of the western United States, with data for the
remainder of the country scheduled to be completed in 2009. The
agencies will need to ensure, however, that LANDFIRE data are
kept current in order to reflect landscape-altering events,
such as large fires and hurricanes, and they do not yet have a
plan to do so.
In 2006, we reported that 95 percent of the agencies'
individual land management units had completed fire management
plans in accordance with agency requirements promulgated in
2001. However, the agencies do not require regular plan updates
to ensure that new data (from LANDFIRE, for example) are
incorporated into the plans. Moreover, in the wake of two court
decisions--each holding that the Forest Service was required to
prepare an environmental assessment or environmental impact
statement under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)
\5\ to accompany the relevant fire management plan--the Forest
Service decided to withdraw the two plans instead of completing
them. It is unclear whether the agency would withdraw other
fire management plans successfully challenged under NEPA; nor
is it clear whether or to what extent such agency decisions
could undermine the interagency policy directing that every
burnable acre have a fire management plan. Without such plans,
however, current agency policy does not allow use of the entire
range of wildland fire response strategies, including less
aggressive, and potentially less costly, strategies.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ For major federal actions that significantly affect the quality
of the human environment, the National Environmental Policy Act
requires all federal agencies to analyze the environmental impact of
the proposed action. 42 U.S.C. Sec. 4332(2)(C).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Fire Program Analysis (FPA) system is a computer-based
model designed to assist the agencies in cost-effectively
allocating the resources necessary to address wildland fires.
FPA is being designed in two phases. Phase I was intended to
provide information for use in allocating resources for the
initial responses to fires and in developing estimates for
agencies' fiscal year 2008 budgets. Phase II was to be focused
on additional activities, including fuel reduction and large-
fire suppression. A ``midcourse review'' of FPA, completed in
2006, however, has resulted in recent endorsement by the
Wildland Fire Leadership Council \6\ of what may be significant
design modifications to FPA--ones that may not fulfill key
project goals of (1) optimizing how resources are allocated,
(2) linking fuel reduction to future preparedness and
suppression costs, (3) ensuring comparability among different
agencies' analyses and resulting decisions, and (4) enabling
aggregation of local costs to identify national options and
related budgets. Agencies plan to have a prototype of phase II,
reflecting this design modification, completed by June 2007.
According to a program official, the prototype will enable
project managers to assess and report to the leadership council
on the planned scope, schedule, and cost of FPA, including
whether or not they will meet the scheduled completion date of
June 2008. Further, gaps in the data collected for FPA may also
reduce its usefulness in allocating resources.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ The Wildland Fire Leadership Council was established in April
2002 to support the implementation and coordination of federal wildland
fire management activities. The council includes membership from
Agriculture and Interior, as well as the agencies with wildland fire
management responsibilities.
Although the agencies had made progress on these three primary
tasks at the time of our 2006 update, they had not developed either a
cohesive strategy identifying options for reducing fuels or a joint
tactical plan outlining the critical steps, together with related time
frames, the agencies would take to complete a cohesive strategy, as we
recommended in our 2005 report. In February 2006, the agencies issued
an interagency document titled Protecting People and Natural Resources:
A Cohesive Fuels Treatment Strategy, but we found that the document did
not identify long-term options or associated funding for reducing fuels
and responding to wildland fires. During our update, officials from the
Office of Management and Budget stated that it would not allow the
agencies to publish long-term funding estimates until the agencies had
sufficiently reliable data on which to base the estimates. The agencies
commented that having such data would not be possible until LANDFIRE
and FPA were more fully operational. We continue to believe that until
a cohesive strategy can be developed, it is essential that the agencies
create a tactical plan for developing this strategy, so the Congress
understands the steps and time frames involved in completing the
strategy.
BETTER GUIDANCE NEEDED TO CLARIFY SHARING OF SUPPRESSION COSTS BETWEEN
FEDERAL AND NONFEDERAL ENTITIES
Federal agencies need to take steps to improve the framework for
sharing wildland fire suppression costs between federal and nonfederal
entities. Effective sharing of suppression costs among responsible
entities can play a role in helping to contain federal expenditures,
especially with the growing number of homes in areas at risk from
wildland fire that may require protection. We recommended in our 2006
report that federal agencies work with relevant state entities to
clarify the financial responsibilities for suppressing fires that burn,
or threaten to burn, across multiple jurisdictions and provide more
specific guidance as to when particular cost-sharing methods should be
used.\7\ As of January 2007, the agencies were updating guidance on
options for sharing costs and under what circumstances each would
typically be used, but it is unclear how the agencies will ensure that
such guidance is followed.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ GAO-06-570.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
We found that federal and nonfederal entities used a variety of
methods to share the costs of fighting wildland fires affecting both
federal and nonfederal lands and resources. Agreements between federal
and nonfederal entities--known as master agreements--provide the
framework for those entities to share suppression costs for wildland
fires that burn or threaten both federal and nonfederal lands and
resources. These agreements typically list several available cost-
sharing methods. The agreements we reviewed, however, often lacked
clear guidance for officials to use in deciding which method to apply
for a specific fire. Clear guidance is important because local
representatives of federal and nonfederal firefighting entities
responsible for protecting lands and resources affected by the fire use
this guidance in deciding which costs will be shared and for what
period. We found, however, that cost-sharing methods were applied
inconsistently within and among states, even for fires with similar
characteristics. For example, in one state we reviewed, the costs for
suppressing a large fire that threatened homes were shared solely
according to the proportion of acres burned within each entity's area
of fire protection responsibility, a method that has traditionally been
used. Yet costs for a similar fire within the same state were shared
differently. For this fire, the state agreed to pay for certain
aircraft and fire engines used to protect the wildland-urban interface,
while the remaining costs were shared on the basis of acres burned. In
contrast to the two methods applied in this state, officials in another
state used yet a different cost-sharing method for two similar large
fires that threatened homes, apportioning costs each day for personnel,
aircraft, and equipment deployed on particular lands, such as the
wildland-urban interface. The type of cost-sharing method ultimately
used can have significant financial consequences for the entities
involved, potentially amounting to millions of dollars. Moreover, as we
reported, federal officials expressed concern that the existing cost-
sharing framework insulated state and local governments from the cost
of providing wildland fire protection in the wildland-urban interface,
thus reducing the incentive for state and local governments to adopt
laws--such as building codes that require fire-resistant materials in
areas at high risk of wildland fires--that in the long run could help
reduce the cost of suppressing wildland fires.
We recommended in our 2006 report that the federal agencies work
with relevant state entities to clarify the financial responsibility
for fires that burn, or threaten to burn, across multiple jurisdictions
and develop more specific guidance as to when particular cost-sharing
methods should be used. The federal agencies generally agreed with our
findings and recommendations and agreed to improve the guidance on
sharing suppression costs. As of January 2007, the agencies were
updating guidance that can be used when developing master agreements
between cooperating federal and nonfederal entities, as well as
agreements on how to share costs for a specific fire. Agency officials
said that this guidance provides additional information about potential
methods for sharing costs and about the circumstances under which each
cost-sharing method would typically be used. It is unclear, however,
how the agencies will ensure that the guidance is followed. Further,
because master agreements are updated only every 5 years, it may take a
number of years before the new guidance is fully incorporated into
master agreements between cooperating entities.
LACK OF CLEAR GOALS AND COHESIVE STRATEGY HINDERS AGENCIES' EFFORTS TO
CONTAIN WILDLAND FIRE COSTS
Preliminary findings from our ongoing work for the committee show
that, despite dozens of federal and nonfederal studies issued since
2000 that consistently identified similar areas needing improvement to
help contain wildland fire costs, the agencies have made little
progress in addressing these areas. Areas identified as needing
improvement to help contain costs--in addition to reducing fuels and
cost sharing discussed previously--include acquiring and using
firefighting personnel and equipment, selecting appropriate strategies
for responding to wildland fires, and effectively managing cost-
containment efforts. Although the agencies have begun taking steps to
address some of the areas previous studies have identified as needing
improvement, much work remains to be done. For example:
Acquiring and using personnel and equipment. The agencies
have taken steps to improve their ability to track and deploy
personnel and equipment, but they have made little progress in
completing the more fundamental step of determining the
quantity and type of firefighting assets needed based on an
analysis of values at risk and appropriate suppression
strategies. Further, although the Forest Service has identified
a series of improvements it plans to make in the acquisition
process, it has so far made little progress.
Selecting appropriate suppression strategies. The agencies
have also begun to improve analytic tools that assist land and
fire managers identify the appropriate suppression strategy for
a given fire, but shortcomings remain. Federal policies
encourage the use of less intensive suppression strategies when
possible, strategies that may also be less costly. Land and
fire managers, however, may be reluctant to employ anything
less than full suppression because of concerns that a fire will
escape control. Currently, much of the information managers use
to estimate potential fire size, risks, and costs are based on
their individual experiences, which can vary widely.
Researchers are developing a new suite of tools that will
analyze fuel conditions and predicted weather conditions to
model expected fire growth and behavior and provide better
information for managers making fire response decisions, but as
of January 2007, these new tools were still being developed and
tested.
Managing cost-containment efforts. The steps the agencies
have taken to date to contain wildland fire costs lack several
key elements fundamental to sound program management, such as
clearly defining cost-containment goals, developing a strategy
for achieving those goals, and measuring progress toward
achieving them. First, the agencies have not clearly
articulated the goals of their cost-containment efforts. For
cost-containment efforts to be effective, the agencies need to
integrate cost-containment goals with the other goals of the
wildland fire program--such as protecting life, property, and
resources. For example, the agencies have established the goal
of suppressing wildland fires at minimum cost, considering
firefighter and public safety and values being protected, but
they have not defined criteria by which these often-competing
objectives are to be weighed. Second, although the agencies are
undertaking a variety of steps designed to help contain
wildland fire costs, the agencies have not developed, and
agency officials to this point have been unable to articulate,
a clear plan for how these efforts fit together or the extent
to which they will assist in containing costs. Finally, the
agencies are developing a statistical model of fire suppression
costs that they plan to use to identify when the cost for an
individual fire may have been excessive. The model compares a
fire's cost to the costs of suppressing previous fires with
similar characteristics. However, such comparisons with
previous fires' costs may not fully consider the potential for
managers to select less aggressive--and potentially less
costly--suppression strategies. In addition, the model is still
under development and may take a number of years to fully
refine. Without clear program goals and objectives, and
corresponding performance measures to evaluate progress, the
agencies lack the tools to be able to determine the
effectiveness of their cost-containment efforts.
CONCLUSIONS
The federal government is expending substantial effort and billions
of dollars in attempting to address our nation's wildland fire
problems. Yet despite promises to do so, the agencies still cannot
articulate how the steps they are taking fit together to form a
comprehensive and cohesive strategy to contain costs or to address the
many wildland fire management problems we and others have reported over
the last 7 years. Given the interrelated nature of wildland fire
issues, they cannot be addressed in isolation but must be viewed from
and addressed within a broader perspective. Agencies need to understand
how each issue affects the others and determine the trade-offs required
to effectively meet program goals while containing program costs.
Therefore, if the agencies and the Congress are to make informed
decisions about an effective and affordable long-term approach to
responding to these issues, agencies need to first develop clearly
defined program goals and objectives and a strategy to achieve them,
including identifying associated funding. Because it will likely be at
least 2009 before the agencies develop a strategy for fuel reduction
efforts that would meet standards required by the Office of Management
and Budget, we continue to believe that in the interim, it is essential
that the agencies create a tactical plan for developing this strategy,
so that the Congress understands the steps and time frames involved
with its completion. In doing so, the agencies need to make very clear
how the final design of FPA will meet the key program goals enumerated
here, how and when the agencies will complete all fire management
plans, and what schedule they envision for periodically updating
LANDFIRE data. At the same time, to help address the rising cost of
protecting the growing number of homes built in the wildland urban
interface--a cost that may be disproportionately borne by the federal
government--federal agencies also need to work with relevant state
entities to ensure that appropriate methods are used for sharing the
costs of suppressing fires that burn, or threaten to burn, across
multiple jurisdictions.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement. I would be
pleased to answer any questions that you or other Members of the
Committee may have at this time.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Our final witness on this panel is the Honorable Phyllis
Fong, who is the Inspector General for the Department of
Agriculture. Please go right ahead.
STATEMENT OF PHYLLIS K. FONG, INSPECTOR GENERAL, DEPARTMENT OF
AGRICULTURE
Ms. Fong. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and ranking member
Domenici and members of the committee. We really very much
appreciate your inviting us here today to testify about our
work.
I want to just briefly summarize for you the situation as
we see it. Basically, there are, as the witnesses have
mentioned, a number of factors contributing to rising costs in
fire suppression, and failure to deal with any one of these
factors will not break the cycle of rising costs. On the one
hand, we have increased fuel buildup in the forests due to
drought, due to weather, due to insects, what have you, and due
to failure to take advantage of the wildland fire programs. On
the other hand, we have a situation in the WUI, as other
witnesses have testified to, where we have increased
development and communities who are not engaging in fire wise
practices. So as a result, what we have is a situation where
fire costs are increasing every year and creating great trouble
for all of us.
Now, our sense of this is that there is a Federal policy
that says that we need to address both of these factors. We
need to address both sides of the equation. The Federal
Wildland Fire Management Policy provides a framework for this.
It recognizes that we have to allow fire to play its natural
role in the forest to reduce the accumulation of hazardous
fuel. It also recognizes that after giving due protection to
human life and safety, which is the top priority, Federal
agencies have to give equal consideration to protection of
property and protection of natural resources.
Finally, the policy states that State and local governments
are primarily responsible for protecting structures in the WUI.
What we have found in our audit work is that in fact these
policies are not being carried out. We need to restore some
balance to this. What is actually happening is that because of
the increase growth in the WUI, fire suppression costs are
being directed more and more to this factor, to the detriment
of reducing fuels in the national forest.
So we issued a number of reports which have a range of
recommendations that go to these issues. The other witnesses
summarized them very effectively. What we really want to
iterate here is that the key point is that Federal fire
suppression costs will not go down, they will continue to rise,
unless something is done to regulate development in the WUI. We
have to somehow incentivize State and local governments to
regulate development in the WUI so that suppression costs for
large fires can fall, thereby allowing a more balanced approach
to reducing fuels in the forest and creating a more balanced
approach to healthy forests. That is our primary--the gist of
our audit work in this area.
My prepared statement goes into the details of our
recommendations and I will submit that for the record. Thank
you for inviting us and I will be happy to address any
questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Fong follows:]
Prepared Statement of Phyllis K. Fong, Inspector General,
Department of Agriculture
Good morning, Chairman Bingaman, Ranking Member Domenici, and
Members of the Committee. Thank you for inviting me to testify before
you today to discuss our recent audits pertaining to the U.S. Forest
Service's (FS) Healthy Forest Initiative (HFI) and Large Fire
Suppression Costs. The Office of Inspector General (OIG) devotes
extensive audit and investigative resources to evaluate and improve the
Department of Agriculture's (USDA) management of its public assets and
resources, including FS and its National Forest System (NFS) lands. We
are committed to conducting reviews of FS programs and activities to
assist agency officials and Members of this Committee in their
respective administrative and legislative oversight responsibilities.
USDA, through FS, is responsible for the management of our Nation's
national forests and grasslands. FS oversees these lands through 155
national forests and 20 grasslands. Wildfires on FS lands are becoming
larger and more expensive to extinguish. From fiscal year (FY) 2000 to
2006, FS suppression costs averaged $900 million annually and exceeded
$1 billion in 4 of those 7 years. In some years, FS has had to borrow
funds from other programs to pay for its wildfire suppression
activities, and this has adversely affected FS' ability to accomplish
work in other areas.
We recently completed two audits that evaluated FS efforts to
reduce the threat of wildfires. Our first audit evaluated FS
implementation of the HFI. One of the primary goals of this initiative
is to reduce the threat of wildfire by removing hazardous fuels from
areas in national forests that constitute the greatest threats of
catastrophic fire. Our second audit evaluated the controls FS had in
place to contain wildfire suppression costs.
In both audits, FS agreed to take action on all our
recommendations. Summarized below are the results of each audit.
I. IMPLEMENTATION OF THE HEALTHY FORESTS INITIATIVE
FS manages more than 192 million acres in the NFS. The agency has
estimated that 73 million acres of this land and 59 million acres of
privately owned forest land are at high risk of ecologically
destructive wildland fire. One of the most extensive and serious
problems related to the health of national forests is the over-
accumulation of dead vegetation that can fuel fires. The increase in
the amount of hazardous fuels is the result of several major factors.
First, extended drought conditions have significantly increased the
amount of unhealthy or dead forests and vegetation. Second, widespread
disease and insect infestations have killed or affected the health of
large areas of national and private forestland. Third, past fire
suppression practices of the Federal, State, and local governments,
companies, and individuals have prevented the natural use of wildland
fire (wildland Fire Use--WFU) to reduce accumulated forest vegetation.
It has been estimated by some FS managers that hazardous fuels are
accumulating three times as fast as they can be treated. The
accumulation of hazardous fuels has contributed to an increasing number
of large, intense, and catastrophically destructive wildfires. Reducing
the buildup of hazardous fuels is crucial to reducing the extent,
severity, and costs of wildfires.
We focused our audit work on the agency's hazardous fuels reduction
program because more than half of FS' funding under the HFI is
allocated for this purpose. For FY 2005 and 2006, the FS budget for
hazardous fuels reduction was approximately $262 million and $281
million, respectively. Specifically, our audit evaluated FS management
controls related to (1) determining if projects were cost beneficial,
(2) identifying and prioritizing projects, (3) allocating funds among
projects, and (4) reporting accomplishments. The following are the
major issues identified in our audit.
Assessment of Risk
At the time of our audit, we found that FS lacked a consistent
analytical process for assessing the level of risk that communities
faced from wildland fire and determining if a hazardous fuels project
would be cost beneficial. FS had not developed specific national
guidance for weighing the risks against the benefits of fuels treatment
and restoration projects.
In order to allocate resources most effectively, it is important
for FS to be able to identify which communities and what NFS resources
are at risk. FS needs to be able to determine the level of risk for
significant and destructive wildland fires throughout the NFS and what
the potential benefit or payback would be from conducting a specific
fuels reduction project. While we agreed with FS that a traditional
cost benefit analysis would be impractical, we concluded that FS could
develop a set of criteria to compare the relative degrees of exposure
and risk to wildland fire that each community faces. The assessment
should include a measure of the benefits and/or consequences of
selecting one project over another for treatment. Currently, FS' nine
regions each have different ways of identifying priorities. At the time
of our audit, FS could not adequately compare hazardous fuels reduction
projects among regions. This affects the ability to identify, on a
national basis, those projects that should be funded and completed
first. While some areas or communities may be at high risk from
wildfires, it may not be effective for FS to spend large sums of money
on hazardous fuels reduction projects if the communities have not
enacted and enforced rigorous building and zoning regulations,
otherwise known as ``Firewise'' regulations. A community's lack of
``Firewise'' regulations could significantly reduce the effectiveness
of any effort by FS to reduce hazardous fuels around the community. FS
officials believe that the new LANDFIRE system being developed will
provide more accurate nationwide data so that they can better define
and identify areas where fuels treatment would be most cost beneficial.
Prioritizing and Funding Projects
FS also did not have the ability to ensure that the highest
priority fuels reduction projects were funded first. Because projects
were not prioritized under uniform, national criteria, there was no
systematic way to allocate funds to the most critical projects. Funds
were allocated based upon a region's historical funding levels and
targets for number of acres to be treated that are set by the FS
Headquarters office in Washington, D.C. There were no controls in place
to prevent funds from being allocated to projects in order to achieve
targets of acres treated instead of reducing the most risk. This could
lead to less important projects being funded.
We recommended that FS develop and implement specific national
guidance for assessing the risks wildland fires present to residents
and communities and determining the comparative value and benefit of
fuels treatment/restoration projects. We also recommended that FS
establish controls to ensure that the process and methodology to
identify and prioritize the most effective fuels reduction projects can
be utilized at all levels to ensure funds are distributed according to
the priority of the projects. This process should have uniformity (and
comparability) from the local level (districts) through to the
Headquarters office and across geographic boundaries (i.e. among
regions).
Performance Measures and Reporting Standards
We found that FS performance measures and reporting standards did
not provide adequate information to evaluate the effectiveness of a
fuel treatment practice. They did not communicate to either FS managers
or other stakeholders whether the treatment of an acre of forest had
resulted in changing its condition class \1\ or if the project reduced
the risk from catastrophic wildland fire. The agency's focus has been
on achieving firm annual targets (output) that are measured in the
number of acres treated. However, these acres are not homogenous,
meaning that some acres of hazardous fuels create much more risk to
communities and resources than others. Reporting the number of acres
treated did not communicate the amount of risk that has been reduced.
Focusing only on acres treated does not communicate key information on
the effectiveness of the treatment practice. In addition, hazardous
fuels accomplishment reports did not provide detailed information to
evaluate the overall progress of the program; details such as the
location of treatments, changes in condition class, and initial or
maintenance treatments are not reported.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The fire-regime condition class is an expression of the
departure of the current condition from the historical fire regime
resulting in alterations to the ecosystem. A condition class is
measured as a 1, 2, or 3, with 3 being the most significant departure
from the historical fire regime. Activities that cause the departure
include fire exclusion, timber harvesting, grazing, growth of exotic
plant species, insects, and disease.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
We recommended that FS develop and implement a more meaningful and
outcome-oriented performance measure for reporting metrics, such as
acres with ``risk reduced'' or ``area protected.'' Also, FS should
direct that implementing effective integrated treatments are more
important than solely meeting acreage targets. We also recommended that
FS improve accomplishment reporting by including more detailed
information, such as breaking down accomplishments by region, noting
changes in condition class, and differentiating between initial and
maintenance treatments and multiple treatments on the same acres.
FS agreed with our audit findings and recommendations and has
committed to take action on them.
II. LARGE FIRE SUPPRESSION COSTS
As part of the agency's ongoing effort to contain wildfire
suppression costs and increase the Wildland Fire Management Program's
accountability, FS senior management requested that OIG evaluate FS'
controls over its wildfire suppression costs. FS wanted OIG to take an
objective and unbiased look at FS' current large fire management
practices. Our primary objective was to evaluate the controls FS had in
place to contain wild fire suppression costs. Specifically, we sought
to (1) determine whether FS ensured non-Federal entities paid an
equitable share of wildfire suppression costs, (2) evaluate whether
wildland fire use (i.e. the management of naturally ignited wildland
fires to accomplish specific management objectives like fuels
reduction) was optimized, and (3) assess the cost effectiveness of FS
wildfire suppression activities.
Suppression Costs Driven by Efforts to Protect Private Property
The Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy of 1995 and its 2001
update direct Federal fire management agencies, including FS, to safely
suppress wildfires on Federal lands at minimum cost considering the
relative values of property and natural resources at risk.\2\ The
Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy also makes State and local
governments responsible for protecting structures within the Wildland
Urban Interface (WUI) \3\ from fire.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ The Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy, chartered in 1994
by the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture, provides the
foundation for Federal interagency fire management activities.
\3\ The WUI is the area where structures and other human
development meet or intermingle with undeveloped wildland. Wildland
urban interface is any area containing human developments, such as a
rural subdivision, that may be threatened by wildland fires.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
We found that the majority of FS' large fire suppression costs are
directly linked to protecting private property in the WUI. The number
of private homes being built in the WUI is increasing each year. The
Federal Government has little or no control over this property
development that has a major impact on FS fire suppression costs. Much
of this development is basically unregulated from a fire protection
standpoint. Many communities have few or no regulations mandating the
use of fire resistant building materials or establishing/maintaining
fire safe areas around structures. FS suppression costs are likely to
continue to rise because current public expectations and uncertainties
among Federal, State, and local fire management agencies about fire
protection roles and responsibilities compel FS to suppress fires when
private property is at risk, even when fires pose little threat to NFS
lands. Giving natural resource protection an equal priority to private
property protection in the WUI (or conducting any sort of cost/benefit
analysis) is considered by FS managers to be politically infeasible.
Although the Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy makes State
and local governments primarily responsible for protecting structures
in the WUI, FS managers have not renegotiated their agreements with
State and local governments to apportion responsibilities and costs as
required. State and local governments control building and zoning in
the WUI. However, protection areas have not been redefined to reflect
State and local governments' responsibilities accompanying this growth.
FS managers continue to make it a priority to protect private property
over natural resources. Consequently, FS WUI protection expenditures
have increased rather than decreased. In FY 2003 and 2004, about 87
percent of the large wildfires we reviewed identified protecting
private property as a major strategy objective for the suppression
effort.\4\ Some FS managers estimate that between 50 to 95 percent of
large wildfire costs borne by the agency are directly related to
protecting private property in the WUI. Based on these estimates, FS
spent as much as $1 billion during those 2 years protecting private
properties in the WUI.\5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Based on an analysis of 37 wildfires occurring in 2003 and 2004
with suppression costs exceeding $5 million each.
\5\ This calculation is based on our characterization of ``large
wildfires'' as those exceeding $1 million as recorded in FS' financial
information system.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
To ensure that the burden of protecting property in the WUI is
shared equitably among the Federal, State, and local entities involved,
we recommended that FS seek clarification from Congress as to the
responsibilities of both FS and its non-Federal partners to protect
private properties threatened by wildfires. FS should renegotiate
wildfire protection agreements as appropriate. The Federal Government
should also find ways to encourage State and local governments to enact
and vigorously enforce ``Firewise'' building and zoning codes.
Use of Wildland Fire Should Be Expanded To Control Costs of Future
Fires
Wildland fire use (WFU) \6\ lets naturally occurring fires burn
accumulated hazardous fuels that increase the likelihood of large
expensive wildfires. Naturally occurring forest fires can also be
beneficial for forest and plant health by returning the forests back to
their natural state. To control the risk of costly, catastrophic
wildfires, the Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy specifies that
FS give WFU and fire suppression equal consideration. However, existing
FS firefighting policies and the lack of qualified WFU personnel
restrict FS managers from doing so.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ WFU is the management of naturally ignited wildland fires to
accomplish specific resource management objectives such as fuels
reduction in pre-defined geographic areas outlined in fire management
plans.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Under current FS fire policies, FS can manage a fire for either WFU
or suppression. Once a fire has been fought for suppression, it may not
again be managed for WFU. Concerns that a natural fire could
potentially escape FS control if not suppressed and the protection
expectations of private landowners in nearby communities result in most
NFS fires being treated initially as suppression. Many potentially
beneficial fires may be suppressed because of the restriction on
switching firefighting management objectives. Of the almost 80,000
natural ignitions that occurred on FS land from 1998 through 2005,
approximately 1,500--only 2 percent--were allowed to burn as WFU. In
addition, FS managers have access to far fewer teams for WFU (7) than
teams for suppression (55). FS estimates it needs to have 300 fire use
managers to be able to select WFU as a strategy for all eligible
fires.\7\ At the time of our audit, the agency had only 83 fire use
managers.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ Eligible fires are those that meet the specific WFU criteria
established by each national forest.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The restrictive policies and lack of qualified personnel contribute
to the overwhelming predisposition for FS to suppress fires rather than
let them burn as WFU. Consequently, FS may have missed opportunities to
reduce the hazardous fuels that contribute to large, expensive fires
and may have unnecessarily spent millions of dollars suppressing
wildland fires.
To address the need to optimize wildland fire use, we recommended
that FS modify current policies to allow (1) concurrent management of
wildland fires for both WFU and suppression, (2) transition between WFU
and suppression, and (3) management of wildfire suppressions to
accomplish fuel reductions. We also recommended that FS prioritize
funding to accomplish the staffing and training changes needed to
implement an expanded WFU program.
FS Cost-Containment Controls Need To Be Strengthened
FS has developed internal controls to strengthen financial
accountability for line officers and incident commanders. However, we
found that the cost-effectiveness of managers' and incident commanders'
decisions and oversight were neither tracked during the fire nor
evaluated afterwards. In addition, the agency's performance measures
and reporting mechanisms did not adequately allow FS management to
assess the effectiveness of its wildfire suppression cost-containment
efforts, because the information FS summarized at the end of each fire
season lacked essential data (such as the kinds of critical
infrastructure or natural resources lost or saved) that policymakers
need to evaluate FS suppression activities in relation to the monies
spent.
We also determined that FS national and regional wildfire cost-
containment reviews have limited effectiveness in identifying and
correcting suppression cost inefficiencies because they (1) did not
sufficiently address large cost factors such as the selection of
suppression alternatives and the effectiveness of tactics, (2) did not
help to improve performance because identified problems were not
communicated to affected parties and corrected, and (3) did not occur
with sufficient frequency.
We recommended that FS (1) develop a reporting mechanism to gather
and summarize more meaningful wildfire suppression information, (2)
increase the accountability of line officers and incident commanders by
incorporating into their evaluations an assessment of strategic and
tactical cost-effectiveness, and (3) formalize newly developed wildfire
cost assessment review procedures in FS directives and provide training
to FS staff that perform the reviews.
In summary, we concluded that FS' escalating cost to fight fires is
largely due to its efforts to protect private property in the WUI
bordering FS lands. Homeowner reliance on the Federal Government and
the lack of ``Firewise'' building and zoning regulations results in an
enormous financial burden on FS as it suppresses wildland fires.
Efforts to reduce these costs need to include more equitably sharing
the burden with State and local governments who have the authority to
regulate growth in the WUI. In order to help reduce future costs, FS
needs to revise policies that limit or restrict WFU. FS also needs to
improve the accountability of its line officers and incident commanders
and improve the effectiveness of its large fire reviews.
FS has agreed with our findings and recommendations and has already
begun discussions regarding appropriate incentives to encourage States
to enter into equitable protection agreements. The agency has advised
OIG that it will expand these discussions to include its Federal
wildland fire management partners and the Office of Management and
Budget. Any agreed upon incentives will be included in national
directives so that they will be considered as each region renegotiates
agreements with States. FS has already taken steps to accomplish the
needed staffing and training recommended so that more people can be
qualified and available for critical positions to manage WFU events on
incident command teams.
I want to express my sincere thanks to FS officials and employees
for the assistance and considerable cooperation they extended to OIG
during these two audits. FS faces many difficult programmatic issues
and natural resource challenges as it strives to provide good
stewardship of America's national forests. OIG's management and staff
greatly appreciate the admirable but frequently uncredited work that FS
employees perform on a daily basis to preserve and enhance our precious
national forests.
This concludes my testimony. Thank you again for inviting me to
testify before the Committee. I would be pleased to address any
questions you may have.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Why do we not do 5-minute rounds here because we do have a
panel that we want to bring on if we can.
Let me ask a couple of questions first, maybe directed to
Secretary Rey or Ms. Hatfield, either one. One of the issues
that came up before--I think we spoke about this a year or so
ago, Secretary Rey--is the problem of the way we are doing
budgeting for this wildfire suppression activity. At that time
we were doing it on the basis of a 10-year average. The recent
years would indicate, I think you said in your statement, that
we are in an extended drought cycle today. Obviously the costs
have been substantially greater than we have expected each year
based on our prediction.
I guess Mr. Caswell will be testifying on the second panel
about recommending that agencies use predictive-based budgeting
instead of this 10-year average. What progress is being made to
adopt that recommendation or is there a reason why that does
not make sense?
Ms. Hatfield. Well, Mr. Chairman, we looked at the
specifics of that recommendation and we had some concerns about
the particulars about how they had recommended it in the
context of putting us in a situation of taking appropriated
dollars and moving them essentially into the fire account when
they were appropriated for other reasons. But what we have done
is look at a couple of tools that we could use to help us in
terms of better discerning how we could best use the dollars
that we have available.
One of those is looking at a stratified cost index which
the Forest Service has modeled and DOI now is looking at our
data about how we can put that in there, and we think that will
give us a better understanding of fires that do not fall--or
fall high or low in that range, so we can look at those and
look at specifics about how that we might manage costs better
there.
We also have----
The Chairman. Let me just interrupt because I think maybe
we are talking past each other. My concern is that the number
of fires, the number of acres burning each year from wildfire,
is growing. The cost of dealing with that is growing, and we
are using a method for budgeting that does not take that into
account.
I am just wondering why we do not use a method of budgeting
that does take that into account and recognize that this is, as
Secretary Rey says, an extended drought cycle, and the 10-year
average is not what we are going to wind up with this next fire
season or the fire season after that, just as it has not been
adequate this last fire season or the fire season before that.
Ms. Hatfield. Well, we are using a rolling average, so that
it does take into account where we have had larger fire
expenditures. But if you also look at the averages, in every
year, for example, in the past 5 years it has not been as high
as it was, for example, last year. So the rolling average does
give us a way of looking at potential expenditures that may be
necessary for us in terms of any 1 year.
Obviously, we budget for what we think is the capacity we
are going to need to be successful in putting out fires, and we
have been successful on initial attack using the budget and the
methodology that we are now using, although we are continuing
to look at it.
The Chairman. But you do have these enormous shortfalls
each year.
Ms. Hatfield. In some years.
The Chairman. So you are not budgeting enough money to
fight fires or else, I mean, I am missing something in this
equation.
Mr. Rey. I think if I could add, we have not overspent in
each of the last 10 years.
Ms. Hatfield. Exactly.
Mr. Rey. We have had a couple of years where we did not
expend all of the suppression dollars. But I think----
The Chairman. The last 3 years are the ones I am concerned
about.
Mr. Rey. I do not think we did in 2004. I think we ended up
with money left over.
But I think maybe more to your point, the rolling 10-year
average now includes a significant number of high-cost years.
So using a broader climatological predictive model may not give
us a much different result.
Also, just as a matter of record, the Appropriations
Committee report language, at least for the present, indicates
that we should use a rolling 10-year average. We do have some
congressional direction that we are trying to respond to.
But I think basically we are now at the point where a
predictive model is not going to give us a much different
budgetary result, and as long as we stay in this drought cycle
we will eventually have a rolling average that includes 10 bad
years.
Ms. Hatfield. And as a result of looking at some of the
strategic panel's recommendation, that one specifically, we did
look at some other models to see if we could come up with a
model that would be a better predictor. And while there may be
some marginal improvements in terms of our prediction, not a
lot better than the rolling 10-year average.
The Chairman. All right. My time is up.
Senator Domenici.
Senator Domenici. Senator, I am hoping that after this
hearing you will permit me to join with you in an effort to put
together some suggestions and see if they would agree with
them. Something has to be done. Your questions are right on
point and they seem to be saying they are doing it. But they
are not. I mean, it does not come out on point. It comes out
short every year.
Let me ask a peripheral question. Foresters and others who
are getting involved now are finding themselves potentially
liable in lawsuits, criminal and otherwise. It is causing a
serious ripple. We had recently 3 years after an event one of
the foresters was held liable, not only in a civil suit, but
held liable by a grand jury. He has not been tried yet, but the
grand jury did indict him.
What is going on and what do we do about protecting these
people so that they do not start quitting on us based upon the
fear that they are going to get stuck with the criminal
liability that is not present in the private sector?
Mr. Rey. The problem that we are experiencing has three
parts. As a consequence of exposing Federal firefighting
supervisors to criminal liability, we are now seeing some who
are indicating that because that is only a portion of their
job--the type 3 incident commanders, for instance--they are
declining to keep their training current because they do not
see the point of exposing themselves and their families to
criminal liability.
The second problem that we are experiencing is that our
after-accident investigations, which are investigations that
are designed to find causal factors and learn from them, are
now being impeded because many of our firefighters do not want
to speak freely. In the last fatality, a few of them sought
legal representation and, not surprisingly, their attorneys
told them not to say anything to the accident investigators.
The third problem we have is what will occur when a joint
command incident results in a fatality and the incident
commander is not a Federal employee, but a State employee.
There is a disparity and an inequity between how the criminal
statutes are applied where Federal employee fatalities are
concerned and where State and local employee fatalities are
involved. The expansive definition of what constitutes criminal
negligence does not carry in the case of a death of a State or
a local employee, only a Federal employee. That is under the
U.S. Code as it exists today.
So in a case like the Esperanza fire last fall, where the
California Department of Forestry was in charge of the incident
and Federal employees suffered fatalities, should that
thereafter result in indictment or investigation and indictment
for criminal negligence we are going to find our inter-agency
and inter-governmental firefighting effort impinged because a
lot of State and local employees or supervisors are not going
to want to get involved in a joint command fire because it
exposes them to a liability that they are not presently exposed
to if they are fighting fires completely within their
jurisdiction.
Those are the problems.
Senator Domenici. You told us the problems. What do we do
about it, if anything?
Mr. Rey. The solutions I think are threefold. The first is
to amend Pub. L. 104-208 to allow fire supervisors who do not
qualify for liability insurance to qualify. That would assist.
We could then recommend to our Federal firefighting supervisors
to purchase and be reimbursed for liability insurance. That
only you can do.
A second is something----
Senator Domenici. Do you support that?
Mr. Rey. The administration would support that.
Senator Domenici. Okay.
Mr. Rey. The second is something that we can do and that is
to modify our investigative protocols to more closely resemble
those that are used by the military and NASA, to provide a
measure of privilege to people who provide testimony in
accident investigations that we conduct, so that that
information will not thereafter be used by someone else in a
criminal proceeding.
The third would be to look at----
Senator Domenici. Who would carry that one out?
Mr. Rey. We can do that and are doing it.
Senator Domenici. You are?
Mr. Rey. A third would be to look at Pub. L. 107-203, which
was enacted from this committee to authorize an independent
investigation in the case of Federal fatalities by our Office
of Inspector General, and to clarify that that investigation is
separate and for a separate purpose than the Forest Service
accident inquiry. As I understand it, once our Inspector
General conducts an investigation that suggests criminal
activity, they have a nondiscretionary obligation to refer that
to the appropriate U.S. Attorney for subsequent action. In this
case the criminal act is criminal negligence involving the
death of a Federal official, as the Code presently defines
that.
Senator Domenici. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very
much.
The Chairman. Yes, thank you very much.
Senator Salazar.
Senator Salazar. Mr. Chairman, Senator Tester has to go
preside on the floor, so he has one question. I will defer to
him, and then I think Senator Wyden preceded me here.
The Chairman. Oh, is that right? Okay, we will do it in
that order then.
Senator Tester.
STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN TESTER, U.S. SENATOR
FROM MONTANA
Senator Tester. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I have heard several folks since I have gotten here talk
about the reasons for the increased costs. Drought being one,
building in the urban interface would be another. Since Ms.
Nazzaro has not spoken yet--and the other folks can nod and if
you want to add to it you can--what do you see as the major
reason for the increase in costs for fighting fires?
Ms. Nazzaro. Well, certainly one reason is the accumulation
of vegetation that is going to fuel these fires; another is the
fact that increased building in the wildland-urban interface is
causing the Federal Government to do firefighting activities in
State and local jurisdictions as well. So that certainly is
probably the bottom line.
Senator Tester. A couple follow-ups if I might. Has the
Healthy Forests Initiative done anything to remove some of the
energy load that is in the forests?
Ms. Nazzaro. Well, based on Forest Service data we estimate
that the number of acres needing treatment are growing three
times greater than the acres treated.
Senator Tester. Okay. Finally, is there any recommendations
that have been given or could be given to local entities as far
as the building in these interface areas? Because it is my
understanding that if there was not houses there it could burn
much more freely, and cost far less money to fight. So are
there any recommendations for local governments, because it is
probably a local government issue more than anything? And what
would they be, and what department would give them?
Ms. Nazzaro. I would defer probably to the agencies since
they have more experience fighting fires.
Senator Tester. That would be fine.
Ms. Hatfield. Well, I think, as Mr. Rey referred to
earlier, one of the issues that we continue to work with local
governments is to create fire wise communities, where to the
extent that there is wildland-urban interface that the citizens
are creating a protective space around their home, that they
are using building materials that are less flammable.
The other thing that we as a Federal agency have been doing
in partnership with the State and local governments and the
tribes is to try to place our hazardous fuel reduction projects
concentrating those in the areas that is the wildland-urban
interface, so if there is a fire it will tend to burn over
instead of destroying.
Senator Tester. How much of a priority is being put on
exactly that?
Ms. Hatfield. About half of our funding that is being spent
for hazardous fuel reduction is being spent in the urban-
wildland interface area. That is a very high priority. We have
been working with the communities to develop community wildfire
protection plans. We have been using those as a way of
prioritizing projects.
Senator Tester. With those kind of dollars being spent, are
you seeing any appreciable success?
Ms. Hatfield. Well, one example was the Esperanza fire last
year, where there had been some fuels reduction in that area
and actually the fire went around a community area. So we have
multiple examples of that.
Mr. Rey. One other area of profitable inquiry might be with
regard to insurers. The insurance industry is beginning to
respond to this situation, albeit fairly slowly. The reason it
is slowly is because they do not suffer large numbers of losses
in any one incident, like they do in a major hurricane. So it
has not moved as quickly through the insurance industry as some
of the restrictions on flood plain development did previously.
But to the extent that there is an opportunity to incentivize
insurers to in turn incentivize homeowners to build with less
flammable materials or to build in less flammable areas, that
may be a profitable way to slow the growth of the wildland-
urban interface.
Ms. Nazzaro. I would also encourage the agencies to
continue with three projects that we have reported on in the
past. First, LANDFIRE, which is a key data and modeling system.
We are concerned that obsolete data is not being updated. The
Fire Program Analysis, FPA, was going to be a budget allocation
tool. We do not see that any longer as being such a tool. We
are concerned that with recent design modifications, the
agencies are not going to be able to identify the most cost
effective alternatives.
Last, is the need for fire management plans. These plans
are developed at the local unit level and what we are seeing
now is that the Forest Service is changing its position on the
need for these, and the implications of that certainly is
murky.
Mr. Rey. We are not changing our position on the need for
community-based wildfire protection plans. That has been one of
the key developments resulting from the Healthy Forests
Restoration Act and has driven a lot of our fuels treatment
priorities since that was enacted. On the other two points, we
are still working on LANDFIRE and we are still working on the
Fire Plan Analysis.
Another area where we disagree is on the cohesive fuels
strategy. We have issued, effective April 2006, a cohesive fuel
strategy and as I understand it GAO is not satisfied with that
strategy because it does not provide multi-year funding
assessments for fuels treatment priorities. We respectfully
disagree with the utility of those kinds of multi-year funding
estimates because conditions on the ground are going to change
priorities as years play out. So that is one area, and there
are many in this fire arena, where sometimes the analysis does
not necessarily result in answering questions that in a
relative sense are as valuable as other questions that you need
answered.
Senator Tester. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Let me ask, Senator Craig, did you want to go right now or
should I take one of the others?
Senator Craig. Go ahead. Thank you.
The Chairman. Which of you would like to ask your
questions? Senator Salazar, you were here a little before
Senator Wyden, I am informed.
STATEMENT OF HON. KEN SALAZAR, U.S. SENATOR
FROM COLORADO
Senator Salazar. Thank you very much, Chairman Bingaman.
Thank you for paying attention to the order in which we come
into the hearings, more so than I apparently did.
Let me just first say I very much appreciate you holding
this hearing at this point in time before we go into the fire
season, because I think it allows us to put the spotlight on
what inevitably is a problem year after year in our States in
the West. So I very much appreciate you holding the hearing.
Second, I have a statement for the record, Mr. Chairman,
that I will just submit for the record.
[The prepared statement of Senator Salazar follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Ken. Salazar, U.S. Senator From Colorado
Thank you Chairman Bingaman and Senator Domenici for holding this
important hearing.
I represent the great State of Colorado with approximately 14.5
million acres of National Forests. As I travel around the state I
continually hear about the myriad of challenges our public lands face.
In Colorado alone we face the challenges of managing both developed and
undeveloped recreation, protecting our communities and watersheds from
fire, as well as mitigating the dangerous buildup of hazardous fuels
and a widespread bark beetle infestation.
The bottom line is that it takes proper funding to address these
issues and the growing cost of fire suppression is forcing these
priorities to compete for smaller pieces of the budget pie.
As we discuss the costs associated with protecting our local
communities from wildfire, I must comment on the needs in Colorado when
it comes to hazardous fuels treatment.
Colorado is suffering a prolonged drought that is adversely
impacting our forests. Along with the drought, Colorado is also seeing
an extraordinary insect infestation moving through our forests.
It is estimated that in 2006 around 5 million lodgepole pines on
645,000 acres were killed by mountain pine beetles. The widespread
extent of this drought and infestation has many communities in Colorado
worried, and I am worried too.
I am worried because there is a tremendous amount of hazardous fuel
work to be done in Colorado. The Forest Service reports that 113
projects covering 280,000 acres of hazardous fuels treatments in
Colorado have been approved through NEPA and are available for
implementation pending funding. In fact, 65% of these treatments are
located in the wildland-urban interface, and another 235,000 acres are
being analyzed for approval.
Unfortunately, the Forest Service reports that it implemented just
73,662 acres of treatments in Fiscal Year 2006 due to funding
limitations. I don't want to make the mistake of assessing progress
based solely on acres treated, but it is clear to me that Colorado's
hazardous fuel conditions are deteriorating faster than current funding
is able to address.
I would like to call attention to the cooperative efforts taking
place in Colorado to address this situation. In particular, there are
two specific efforts, the Colorado Bark Beetle Cooperative and the
Front Range Fuels Treatment Partnership feature collaboration between
the Forest Service, local communities, and state agencies.
By working together, these efforts are seeking to prioritize areas
for treatment, lower the costs of those treatments and to address the
associated impacts of this beetle epidemic. The hope of these
cooperatives is to lower future suppression costs by investing in
forest health today. I whole heartedly support their work and I was
encouraged to see the Forest Service commit an additional $1,000,000 to
the region to support this effort.
In 2006, the Forest Service spent approximately $2 billion fighting
fires. When compared to the $5 billion the Forest Service received in
2006 appropriations, it becomes evident that the rising cost of
fighting fires is an important issue that must be addressed.
As I stated in a hearing on this issue last year: it is common-
sense that as we address fire fighting costs, federal land managers and
local governments should never be in a position where they are
reluctant to order needed resources to fight a wildfire because of
costs. So, there must be some balance as to how we approach this issue
and I am anxious to hear from our witnesses this morning.
Thank you again.
The Chairman. We will include that.
Senator Salazar. Third, let me ask a couple of questions.
Undersecretary Rey, you have heard me speak about what I have
said is the Katrina of the West with respect to the millions
upon millions of acres that have been infested by beetles in my
State of Colorado as well as other States across the West. What
I want you to do is speak to me about the budgetary sufficiency
of meeting the hazardous fuels treatment that has already been
approved in the States in general, but particularly in
Colorado.
In my State I believe we have 113 projects that have
already been approved for hazardous fuel treatment. That is
280,000 acres. Yet, of that we have only a very small amount
where we have the money to go ahead and do 73,000 acres. So
essentially less than one third of the acreage that has already
gone through the entire NEPA process and has been approved
through that process is undergoing any kind of fuels treatment.
What is the plan of the Department--and Nina, if you also
would respond to that. What is the plan in terms of getting to
a point where we catch up? And I have another question, so I
would appreciate if you would give me a short answer.
Mr. Rey. The short answer is, based on the discussions that
we had previously, we had planned to allocate some additional
resources during the fiscal year 2007 cycle to Colorado
specifically. Some of that has been done. Some of it has been
held in abeyance until we see where the continuing resolution
ends up.
We also will likely allocate some additional resources to
Colorado in the 2008 budget, although we will be able to speak
more about that next Monday when the budget is rolled out.
In general terms, one of the things that the continuing
resolution, the year-long continuing resolution, may do is set
us back on fuels treatment work. Our 2007 request was higher
than the 2006 enacted level. So if the continuing resolution
keeps us at 2006 levels this will be one area where we will,
unfortunately, take a slight step backwards.
Senator Salazar. So the essence of it, is that we do have a
significant underfunding, if you will, to deal with the fuel
hazards treatment that has already been approved?
Mr. Rey. We have a backlog of projects that are ready to go
in Colorado. There are a few other places where we have that as
well. But we are going to try to catch up as much as we can.
Senator Salazar. Thank you for that response, and also
thank you for your assistance as we try to deal with this
epidemic in Colorado and other States across the country.
Second, let me ask just a very quick question--I have to
choose my questions here--on biomass. A big deal, the renewable
energy, and we are talking about it all over the West. In every
one of the committees that I sit on, biomass is a big deal.
Can you give me a very short answer on what the initiative
is, either Nina or Mark, within your agency to try to deal with
the biomass opportunity within our forests and our BLM lands?
Ms. Hatfield. Well, we are continuing to increase the
number of projects that we are doing. As an example, WFLC went
to Warm Springs in Oregon to visit with the Warm Springs Tribes
that have----
Senator Salazar. Let me ask you this question. So I have a
bunch of communities that are interested in biomass projects in
my State. They want help to figure out how they can move
forward. Where do they go to get help, what is that help, and
can you respond in about 30 seconds?
Ms. Hatfield. Yes. We have a group that works with wildland
fire in the Department and we would be glad to provide some
information and some help. So just have them contact us.
Mr. Rey. We also have grants programs for small scale
biomass conversion activities or projects through our Rural
Development Agency and through the Forest Service. So the best
thing would be for those communities to contact us directly.
Senator Salazar. Mark, would that be through you or through
whom?
Mr. Rey. For the Forest Service part of it, it would be
through me. For the rural development part of it, it would be
through Undersecretary Tom Doehr.
Senator Salazar. I appreciate the quick response.
One final question. It seems to me that in the responses
and testimony we have heard a lot about the WUI and the
building up of the WUI. Senator Wyden said, stay out of the
WUI. So I told him, why do we not do a Wyden WUI bill? So,
Under Secretary Rey, you were saying something about the flood,
about the flood control and flood plains have really been
managed much better than they were 20 years ago. How about the
prospects of doing something prospectively? What could the
Federal Government do in terms of encouraging not building out
in this urban-wildland interface or to do it in the kinds of
conditions that are not going to make the problem, if you look
at the problem in a prospective way. Again, because my time is
up could you do it in a few seconds.
Mr. Rey. I think the answer is it is probably most
effective to work through the insurance industry and provide
incentives to how they write policies governing where people
buy, because very little of this development is Federally
funded, in fact virtually none of it is. So the nexus for some
sort of Federal control is not very good.
Senator Salazar. It is not Federally funded, but the
consequence ends up being funded then by the government in
terms of fighting fire.
Mr. Rey. Right.
Senator Salazar. Thank you very much, and thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
I am informed that Senator Wyden needs to leave and Senator
Craig is willing to let him go ahead. So please go ahead.
Senator Wyden. Thank you very much.
Senator Craig. I am building chits with my new chairman.
The Chairman. Yes. Well, you are really building chits with
Senator Wyden.
Senator Wyden. Thank you both and thanks to all my
colleagues.
Secretary Rey, let me begin with you. I found it very
troubling to see the gap between what the independent experts
are saying needs to be done in terms of fighting fires and what
the Bush administration is actually doing. But I will tell you
what I find even more troubling is what we are starting to pick
up. Chairman Bingaman's very able staff has come up with an
internal document that comes from the Forest Service, so we are
talking about your own people, and these are the professional
fire folks and they are blowing the whistle on all the
inefficiency in the way you all run the program.
I just want to read you a couple of comments from some of
their internal documents. One that came in response to
questions posed by the OMB says, and I quote here: ``There are
no effective incentives in place.'' This is a professional fire
person who works for the Forest Service. At another point he
goes on to say: ``I have not observed improved accountability
at the forest supervisor level.''
So my question is, when we have got your own people saying
this kind of thing and the press is bringing out all kinds of
examples of costs being out of control--and I am looking at an
article about last year in fighting fires there was a catering
company used that furnishes I guess luncheons to the Hollywood
stars. Why can we not take some practical steps, for example
like using contractors locally?
My understanding is sometimes people will voluntarily help
out. We are paying--according to this article--last year the
Government paid $10.25 a gallon for ice tea. Now, staff has
been told that people are saying, well, get ice tea out to
these courageous firefighters, for free.
So can we bring common sense to this that will pick up on
the suggestions of your own people, your own internal people,
and some of the things like using local folks to deliver ice
tea and local contractors, rather than catering outfits that
are set up to serve the stars?
Mr. Rey. Well, let us start with the last one because I
think that is an exaggeration, if not a misrepresentation.
Senator Wyden. I am just reading from the article.
Mr. Rey. Well, do you believe everything you read in the
newspapers?
Senator Wyden. So they are wrong?
Mr. Rey. They offered you, offered their readers, a very
skewed appraisal of what is happening. We use commercial
caterers that are in business doing catering. They cater at
movie sets, too, and at movie sets they feed, yes, the people
who are starring in the movies, as well as all the other
workers on the set. That is what they do. They are commercial
caterers. We pay them a commercial rate for their service.
Now, are we going to replace a system of commercial
contract caterers with local volunteers? I do not think so.
Senator Wyden. How about what your own Forest Service
people are saying? I mean, I read you from an internal Forest
Service document.
Mr. Rey. I think that is a good thing. I think it means
that our people are pursuing cost containment options. I am
familiar with that document and we have put him, the person who
wrote it, on some of the cost containment teams. Cost
containment in the cause of fire suppression is a process that
continues with every incident.
It is wonderful that you are holding this hearing in
January before the fire season begins, because cost containment
is not nearly as popular once the fire season is in progress.
Senator Wyden. Tell me, if you would, what was done after
this Forest Service employee said ``There are no effective
incentives in place''? He made that comment. What was done
after he said that?
Mr. Rey. We added him to some of the cost containment teams
to use the value of his expertise to see if he could create
some of these incentives.
Senator Wyden. So he was added to the teams. Were any
changes made?
Mr. Rey. Some of the changes incorporated, or described,
rather, in our testimony.
Senator Wyden. What was done with respect to his comment
that there needs to be improved accountability at the forest
supervisor level?
Mr. Rey. That is included as well in some of the
recommendations that we have adopted.
Senator Wyden. So you have basically done all the things
that this internal document says? They talk about how there is
not a fully integrated system for working within the wildland
fire agencies. It says ``This is not new information.'' That
was done?
Mr. Rey. Yes.
Senator Wyden. Okay. I guess we will get a very different
picture from your independent reviewers the next time, folks,
because Secretary Rey says everything has been taken care of. I
will tell you, Mr. Secretary, we have heard again and again----
Mr. Rey. I do not think I said everything has been taken
care of.
Senator Wyden. You said we are going to have the changes.
What the Forest Service person blew the whistle on you said the
agency had moved to change. So we will watch that----
Mr. Rey. That is not quite the same, though. What I said is
he made a number of recommendations which we are adopting. Now,
some of those recommendations we may succeed in adopting, we
may not. But I did not say, nor would I say, that everything is
taken care of. Cost containment is an ongoing process. It will
continue to be an ongoing process. We will through learning,
create new opportunities for cost containment that we do not
fully appreciate today. Through some of the information that we
are acquiring through LANDFIRE, through other mechanisms that
are under way, we will find new ways to control costs.
Senator Wyden. Mr. Chairman, my time is up. I will just say
that again and again we have been told that there are going to
be changes so that independent experts come in and give us a
different picture, and it does not happen. It is kind of like
the marquee at the old movie house says ``Coming Soon,'' and it
does not get there. I hope that we will not see----
Mr. Rey. I respectfully disagree and I cannot let that
stand unrebutted. If you look at the national witness panel
that you will have in the next, the witnesses that you will
have in the next panel, you will see that they have been
commending us for adopting some of their recommendations.
Senator Wyden. The independent reviewers have told us
otherwise, Mr. Secretary.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Senator Craig.
STATEMENT OF HON. LARRY E. CRAIG, U.S. SENATOR
FROM IDAHO
Senator Craig. Before Senator Wyden leaves, I am finding
this an interesting dialogue and I say that because I have just
come from a climate change hearing in Environment and Public
Works. Mr. Chairman, the thing that is frustrating me today,
last year was the worst fire season on record ever in our
country's history. 30 percent of the CO2 put in the
atmosphere was from large biomass burning. 30 percent of
climate change gases were in part, a large part of unhealthy
forests. That is a reality.
I will never forget the time when we had a very severe fire
complex in Payette National Forest and President Clinton flew
out to see it, and I rode with him on a helicopter to the fire.
We flew over it. On the way back we were visiting because there
were these big green squares out in the middle of this forest
and it was burned all the way around it. He said: Why did it
not burn? I said: Well, those are private lands; they are
managed. They are thinned, they are cleaned and they are logged
appropriately.
I said: And it is also true, Mr. President--this was the
tail end of his term--you have reduced logging on our national
forests by nearly 90 percent.
Whether you disagree or agree with that, also the irony.
That is, until the Forest Service because of our public policy
started saying, well, we are not going to put out fires any
more. That used to be an absolute and if you have an absolute
you can get results, much more so than an arbitrary and
capricious manner in which that fire burns and this fire does
not, let us see if this one goes where we think it is going to
go, if it does not get too big we will leave it alone, and then
it blows up on you under the conditions of today and you have
to build a city to fight a fire.
Tremendous inefficiencies out there. As we reduced logging
on our public lands by 85, 90 percent, we did something else
that none of us want to remember. We took away the men and
women that were out there on a daily basis. I grew up in an
environment, when a fire started the logger out in the woods
and the D8 Cat that was out there building roads stopped, went
over and put the fire out, and came back and started logging
again. Those people do not exist any more per se, and they were
a very inexpensive source of firefighting that I doubt the
Forest Service ever calculated. In some instances they paid
them.
So we have totally changed the character of firefighting by
our own public actions at a time when our forests get
progressively less healthy. Last year we reaped the whirlwind,
and now we are debating climate change, but nobody wants to put
into it the 30 percent contributive factor of CO2
into the atmosphere by biomass burning.
All I can say is the hypocrisy of what we are doing is a
fascination in itself. So now we are sitting here condemning
these large communities--have you been out on a fire recently,
Ron, or Mr. Chairman? If it is a big one, it is a fascination.
There are tents, there are 18-wheelers, there is the health
tent, there is the food tent, there is the administrative tent.
It is a city within itself, and frankly for our rural
communities it is a great chunk of economy.
A fire has the negative of burning things down, but it has
the positive of goods and services being bought by the Federal
Government in huge quantities. I do not know about ice tea
being $10 a gallon, but at the same time--I mean, those are the
realities of where we were and where we are today, and I am
every bit as frustrated as all of you, because my guess is in
the near future it is not going to get any better. It could
even get worse if we do not get at the business of creating a
healthier environment for our forests.
My question to you then, Mark, is if the agency had
invested $1.5 billion last year in hazardous fuels reduction
work in the wildland-urban interface--what do we call that now?
The Chairman. WUI.
Senator Craig. WUI, how many acres could it have
accomplished and would that have significantly reduced the cost
of fighting fire in that year or future years?
Mr. Rey. Well, we spent over half of that amount between
our two Departments last year and treated about 4 billion
acres. So I guess you could probably postulate that--with that
amount we could probably treat somewhere between 6 and 8
million acres in the wildland-urban interface.
I do not know whether that would have reduced the incidence
of fire, but it has reduced the loss of property as a
consequence of those treatments. So for instance, last year,
even though we had the worst fire season on record, we lost
only about 750 homes, whereas in 2003 we lost something like
3,000 homes, which is a lot less.
Senator Craig. Your supervisors tell me they are
frustrated; they spend more time saving dwellings than they do
resource in many of these fires.
Mr. Rey. That is pretty much a given now if the fire
ignites in or near the wildland-urban interface.
Senator Craig. Nina, are firefighting agencies from the
Department of the Interior going to adopt some of these
recommendations that obviously Mark and the committee have been
talking about, and if so what are they?
Ms. Hatfield. Well, we are doing them jointly. We have
adopted the--we have been working collectively with the Forest
Service and other partners, for example, to provide more
resources to rural fire departments so that we can have local
resources available on initial attack, which hopefully will
mean that we do not have to devote a lot of Federal resources
to bringing people in at a higher cost to do a larger fire.
We have been working collectively together on all of these
things and are moving forward to take these efforts jointly.
Senator Craig. In looking out into the future with those
kinds of recommendations and therefore those kinds of changing,
how much cost savings headway do you think you can expect as,
let us say, as a percentage?
Ms. Hatfield. I think that really what we are trying to do
is to look at cost containment. Again, if you look--I am sure
your panel members in your next panel--our strategic issues
panel told us that it is not--we have inflation in doing the
business of fighting fire. It costs more for aviation
resources, other resources. But what we are trying to do is
control some of the cost drivers, and reductions of the fuels,
having more initial attack capability at a local level, in
terms of trying to get better data to our firefighters through
LANDFIRE, other tools like that. So we are trying to contain
costs and I think if we can manage to keep it relatively flat
we will have done a good job.
Senator Craig. You will. If you can keep them relatively
flat, that will be a great accomplish.
Ms. Hatfield. The real driver here are the number of acres
that are burning.
Senator Craig. Yes.
Mr. Rey. Mr. Chairman, in our statement we summarized five
recently adopted management efficiencies. What I would like to
submit to the record is a document that lists a total of seven
that are under way, as well as estimated cost savings
associated with that. So if hopefully your staff gets the
opportunity to read this, it will dispel the proposition that
we are not doing anything.
The Chairman. We appreciate that.
Senator Craig. Mr. Chairman, you have been very generous
with your time.
Just a housekeeping matter for you, Mark. I have been a
strong advocate of fuels for schools, biomass heating for our
schools. We have got several stood up in Idaho today. Most of
these schools are within or adjacent to national forests. Now
we are being told by the forests they cannot supply the
biomass. It is the ultimate Catch-22 in bureaucracy and
paperwork, and so they are having to lean on private instead of
public.
We did it all to clean the forests and now we cannot supply
the material because we just cannot get through the
bureaucracy. Would you look into it?
Mr. Rey. Sure. If you can give me the specific forests and
schools, I would be happy to look into it.
Senator Craig. Council, Idaho, Payette National Forest,
Council District. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you very much and thank this panel of
witnesses. I think it has been useful.
Why do we not bring the second panel forward and hear their
testimony.
[Pause.]
The Chairman. On this second panel the witnesses are: Dr.
Bruce McDowell, who is a fellow with the National Academy of
Public Administration here in Washington; James Caswell, who is
co-chair of the Strategic Issues Panel on Fire Suppression
dealing with the costs of the Wildland Fire Leadership Council,
and from Boise, Idaho; and our third witness on this panel is
Kirk Rowdabaugh, who is the State Forester from Arizona. He is
speaking on behalf of the Western Governors Association.
Thank you all for being here and why do we not start with
you, Mr. McDowell. If you could summarize your comments and
give us the main points that would be much appreciated.
STATEMENT OF BRUCE McDOWELL, Ph.D., FELLOW, NATIONAL ACADEMY OF
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
Dr. McDowell. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and members
of the committee.
It is a real pleasure to be here. I have testified in the
House a couple times and I have been in touch with your staff
and the staff in the House. As you have already been told, we
did about 3\1/2\ years of study on wildfire that we finished up
in 2004. So each time I testify I have to do a little cram
course on what is going on.
I read the materials sent out ahead of time. I have
submitted some prepared testimony, which I will not read. Let
me just quickly summarize what is in that testimony. There are
two basic things that does. It summarizes the recommendations
we made in our six reports over the period of 2000 to 2004 and
the response to those recommendations, which has generally been
pretty positive, as you already heard from the administration
testimony. We are pretty pleased with what they have done on
that.
It stresses the cost containment potentials of eight best
buys. I must say, looking back, a lot of those best buys are
already off the shelf. Not that they have been totally
implemented, but the agencies are working on them. So I think
they are moving in the right direction in most respects.
There are three categories of best buys that we have urged.
One is getting a bigger bang for the buck on suppression, and
most of the testimony and most of the agency attention, the
attention by the OIG, is on that subject. I might just say that
I would not expect great savings in that category. These are
marginal savings. Once the fire begins you are kind of locked
in by an awful lot of precondition and you have got to follow
through on it or you have a disaster on your hands.
The second is break the cycle of suppression costs driving
out the hazard mitigation efforts. I think that is the most
problematic of the areas and I will address that in a minute.
The third area is to expand the pot for mitigation.
Mitigation costs are huge and when you begin to think about
putting those into the Federal budget you begin to immediately
realize that that is not going to work. So the key is to get
some partnerships going, to get everybody involved, to get
those WUI communities doing things in their own interest, not
relying completely on the Federal Government or the States to
step in.
I think that is one of the places where I see the greatest
improvement since I last looked at this whole area. The
creation of these community wildfire protection plans has
really increased since the last time I looked. There are some
650 of them in existence now. When we began our studies there
were not more than one or two or three. We had to seek out by
asking everybody all across the country, are there any things
like this, and fortunately there were a couple that
demonstrated that it could be done.
Now we have 650, another 600 or so in preparation. I think
you should not underestimate the potential for these to be
effective, because what they do is they get all of these
parties together in their own interests in communities. We
recommended about 350 regional approaches to this so that would
be reasonable to fund those. So the ones that are in effect
must be somewhat smaller than we had envisioned. Nevertheless,
they are going in the right direction.
If you do not have a fire protection plan like this, you do
not have anything going for you other than suppression, and
that is a dead end. The only place you are going to get cost
containment over the long time is hazard mitigation. What
concerns me most about what I see today is the charts that you
showed at the very opening, the extent to which suppression is
eating up the budgets of the agencies. This is a dead end. I
think it is penny-pound--it is not the right way to go.
So what can we do? Let me just point to two things that I
think you should pay real attention to on this breaking the
cycle business. One is, under no circumstances let the
suppression money run into and drive out the production of
these community fire protection plans. I think that would be a
disaster. It would go completely the wrong way.
The other thing I think is something that has already been
mentioned here: Look for opportunities to commercialize the
hazard mitigation efforts. You are not going to pay for all of
that out of the Federal budget. You need to pay for it somehow
and these biomass and other kinds of new small forest
industries I think are the way to go. Prescribed burning.
Almost all of the hazard mitigation efforts are pure 100
percent governmental costs. They are very expensive that way.
If you can take the biomass and the small diameter lumber,
even some large lumbering which might be done to establish
fire-dampening patterns within broad expanses of national
forests and other Federal lands, so some larger lumber perhaps,
and work that out on a planned basis so that you have a
sustained, predictable yield of these materials that can be
used, that is the only way you are going to get industry to
come in.
If industry comes into an industry where there is no
reasonable expectation that you are going to have a constant
supply of materials, why should they go into business like
that? So you simply cannot afford to overlook these
opportunities to reduce hazards.
[The prepared statement of Dr. McDowell follows:]
Prepared Statement of Bruce D. McDowell, Ph.D., Fellow, National
Academy of Public Administration
Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, my name is Bruce
McDowell. I am a Fellow of the National Academy of Public
Administration, and for three and a half years it was my pleasure to
direct the Academy's studies of wildland fire issues for the Department
of the Interior and the USDA Forest Service. As you know, the Academy
is an independent, non-partisan organization chartered by the Congress
to give trusted advice to the federal government and others.
The views I am presenting today represent those of the expert
Academy Panel convened for the purpose of guiding our work on six
wildfire reports issued between August 2000 and January 2004 and not
necessarily those of the Academy as a whole. We enjoyed working with
Congressional and agency staff throughout that period, and appreciate
the opportunity to appear before your Committee today to highlight the
key findings and recommendations from our work. Although we have had a
limited opportunity to formally assess progress in implementing the
National Fire Plan since January 2004, we believe that the overall
thrust of the Panel's reports remains relevant today.
GENERAL THRUST OF THE ACADEMY'S WILDFIRE REPORTS
Our first report--on the Cerro Grande Fire (August 2000)--found a
need to significantly improve risk assessments and coordination
practices in the wildfire program of the National Park Service, and
those improvements have been made to improve the safety of prescribed
burning.
Our second report--Managing Wildland Fire: Enhancing Capacity to
Implement the Federal Interagency Policy (December 2001)--called for a
number of improvements for coordinating the various federal wildfire
programs. Chief among the Panel's recommendations was the establishment
of an interagency coordination body, and the Wildland Fire Leadership
Council (WFLC) was established shortly thereafter. We believe that was
a major step forward. That report also recommended a non-federal
advisory committee to work closely with the interagency council to
establish a strong intergovernmental partnership, and the 10-Year
Strategy Group that works through the Western Governors' Association
resulted. Another recommendation of our second report was to regularly
assess the large fires each year to identify lessons for improving
practices in subsequent years. Those assessments now seem to be firmly
established.
Our third report--Wildfire Suppression: Strategies for Containing
Costs (September 2002)--made 19 recommendations mostly designed to help
reduce costs while fighting fires. The one most directly implemented is
a requirement to have an Incident Business Advisor (IBA) representing
the Agency administrator on costly fires. This advocate for cost-
consciousness is independent of the Incident Management Team and had
been used before on some fires. But they had not been used on a
consistent basis because there were not enough qualified individuals to
go around at the time we studied six of the largest wildfires that
burned during 2001. Subsequently, more IBAs have been trained and
assigned, and it may be time to assess their effectivenessif such an
assessment has not already been made. I note that the USDA Inspector
General has recently addressed the cost containment effectiveness of
Forest Service line offices and incident commanders, and has
recommended further improvements.
Our fourth report--Containing Wildland Fire Costs: Improving
Equipment and Services Acquisition (September 2003)--emphasized the
need for better analysis of alternative sources of supply for
firefighting equipment and services. Based on experience in other
federal agencies, we estimated that systematic use of such analysis
would be likely to save at least ten percent of the annual spending on
these items--or about $80 million per year. We understand that several
new procurement analysts have been assigned to further this goal.
Our fifth report--Containing Wildland Fire Costs: Utilizing Local
Firefighting Forces (December 2003)--recommended training and
qualifying more local firefighters to work on large wildfires,
establishing locally dedicated Type-3 Incident Management Teams in
wildfire-prone areas, and facilitating access to the federal grants
designed to enhance the capabilities of local firefighters that are
available from multiple sources. Local firefighters are usually the
least costly to useif they are properly trained and equipped. Too often
they are automatically dismissed from the fire scene as soon as a
national Incident Management Team arrives (and replaced with higher
cost resources), because there is no way to know whether they are
qualified. If the local firefighters are led by a qualified local Type-
3 team from the beginning of the fire (at which they usually arrive
first because they are closest), there is a much better chance that
they will keep the fire small and less costly. If the fire grows large
enough to need a more highly qualified team, the transition is likely
to be smoother and quicker. And the local Type-3 team will be able to
take back command of the fire earlier as it comes under control. All of
these practices will reduce the cost of the fire. We understand that
the federal agencies are now aggressively promoting creation of many
more Type-3 teams, with full support by the National Association of
State Foresters and the International Association of Fire Chiefs.
Our sixth and probably most important report--Containing Wildland
Fire Costs: Enhancing Hazard Mitigation Capacity (January 2004)--
recommended significantly enhancing statewide and community-wide
Wildfire Mitigation Partnerships. The more our Panel looked at the
potential to save money while suppressing wildfires that were already
burning, the more it became convinced that is the wrong place to look
for major savings. Our Panel recognized that wildfire hazard reduction
(1) is a huge undertaking, and (2) requires spending money now to
reduce suppression costs later. We are well aware that neither of these
realities makes this initiative easy to sell to federal appropriators
who are working under increasingly tight caps on what they can spend
each year. However, our Panel saw no alternative to the conclusion that
hazard mitigation provides the only real answer to controlling
suppression costs.
Once a fire begins, its course is largely predetermined by
drought, weather, and ignitions--plus the fuel that is in its
path.
If development or other high value assets--such as
watersheds, power lines, pipelines, communications relay sites,
or an ecological system that would be badly damaged by a severe
fire--are in the fire's path, the pressure is to use whatever
means are available to put it out, regardless of the cost.
The factors that can be controlled to reduce suppression
costs are mostly available to work on before the fire ignites.
They include creating fire-resistant communities and defensible
spaces, strategic fuel break systems that dampen fire
progression patterns and make fires more manageable, and
reduced fuel loadings in wild areas where a policy favoring
wildland fire use where when lightning strikes could play their
natural role without harm.
Taking action on these controllable factors at a scale that matches
the current need will require collaboration among all the responsible
and affected parties--both public and private. The current federal
policy of dealing with this daunting challenge at a ``landscape scale''
is correct. However, few collaborative mechanisms for this purpose
existed at this scale when we prepared our study. Ruidoso, NM and
Central Oregon provided examples where such work had begun. So, our
Panel recommended creating and supporting such mechanisms in all
wildfire-prone areas. It is one of eight ``best buys'' that our Panel
recommended for consideration.
I was pleased to note in reviewing the December 2006 10-Year
Comprehensive Strategy Implementation Plan that major progress has been
made in establishing these community-based collaborations and producing
over 600 Community Wildfire Protection Plans. This is a major advance
that deserves your attention and encouragement, because these plans are
designed to:
reduce risks to firefighters, communities, and the
environment
improve the cost-effectiveness of firefighting
achieve more ecologically natural and safer wildland fire
regimes
Even in the tightest budget year, support for this
intergovernmental collaboration should be provided, because it can
leverage funding from many sources. This becomes increasingly important
the tighter the federal budget becomes. Collaboratives likes this could
provide an excellent opportunity for federal wildfire agencies, for
example, to negotiate equitable suppression cost-sharing agreements
based on local hazard mitigation actions such as those recommended by
Firewise.
Altogether, a substantial amount of progress has been made on
implementing the National Fire Plan since 2000. But, of course, much
more remains to be done.
I have attached an outline of the eight best buys * emerging from
our latest three reports, and would be happy to answer questions about
any or all of them. For now, I will highlight just one.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
* The outline has been retained in committee files.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Something needs to be done to break the too-frequent cycle of
borrowing from hazard mitigation funds (and other land management
programs) to fund suppression activities that run over-budget. This
practice has been very disruptive, unpredictable, and
counterproductive. FEMA disasters are not funded this way, and neither
should wildfire disasters.
As I was preparing this testimony, I found that recent
Congressional actions have given suppression funding such a high
priority that it now consumes over 40 percent of the entire Forest
Service budget. This puts enormous pressure on non-suppression
programs--and tends to drive out essential hazard mitigation
activities, among others. In the long-run this is counterproductive.
I would like to close by drawing your attention to a very important
pilot project in Central Oregon. The Central Oregon Intergovernmental
Council (COIC)--an example of the kind of collaborative organization
our Panel has recommended--is developing bioenergy options for turning
the thinning of forests into a new economically productive ``forest
industry.'' COIC has federal demonstration funds to explore the
potentials for new uses of forest biomass. The project is co-sponsored
by the USDA Forest Service, the Oregon departments of Energy and
Economic & Community Development, and the Business Alliance for
Sustainable Energy. If some coordination money like this can leverage
economic development from what is otherwise only a fire-safety
necessity, and a 100 percent governmental expense it will create
another best buy. Innovations like this are well worth watching and
encouraging.
Shifting the costs of wildfire hazard mitigation into the private
sector as a profit-making opportunity would be a perfect solution to
what is now perceived to be an unaffordable public obligation. The
federal role would include technology research (which is being
pursued), technical assistance, and perhaps some market aggregation to
help reduce the risks to early adopter companies willing to venture
into this new activity.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my remarks. I would be delighted to
answer questions.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Why don't we hear from Mr. Rowdabaugh next. We will just go
across the table. Thank you.
STATEMENT OF KIRK ROWDABAUGH, STATE FORESTER, ARIZONA, ON
BEHALF OF THE WESTERN GOVERNORS' ASSOCIATION
Mr. Rowdabaugh. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the
committee. This testimony is presented on behalf of the Western
Governors' Association with the support and concurrence of the
National Association of State Foresters, the National
Association of Counties, and the International Association of
Fire Chiefs.
Recently the Inspector General's Office released an audit
of the Forest Service and the costs incurred controlling large
fires. We believe the audit contains some useful
recommendations that are consistent with WGA policy and we
believe they should be implemented as quickly as possible. The
Forest Service should take greater advantage of wildland fires
to reduce the hazardous fuel on Federal lands and it should
establish controls to assess the performance of its line
officers and its incident commanders in controlling large fire
costs.
The Congress should encourage action by all Federal land
management agencies on these recommendations. However, in
response to the audit report the Forest Service expressed a
need to determine if congressional intent exists in current law
regarding its responsibilities for protection of the wildland-
urban interface. The Forest Service stated that if it cannot
determine its existing authorities and responsibilities that it
intends to seek clarification from Congress regarding the
Federal responsibilities in the wildland-urban interface and
other private properties that are threatened by wildfires.
We are disturbed by this apparent uncertainty of Federal
authorities and responsibilities for managing wildfires. Should
the Forest Service seek clarification from Congress regarding
its responsibilities for fires burning on the national forests,
Western Governors and others want to ensure that Congress
solicits State and local governments on this important matter.
In many Western States the primary reason rural communities
are at risk from wildfires is the unhealthy condition of
neighboring Federal forests, and Western Governors urge the
Congress to provide prompt and unambiguous direction to the
Federal agencies regarding their responsibilities for the
management of the national forests, including the need to
control wildfires.
In 2004 a Strategic Issues Panel on Fire Suppression Costs
was formed by the Wildland Fire Leadership Council and was co-
chaired by WGA. Many of the foremost Federal and non-Federal
experts on wildland fire management produced a report entitled
``Large Fire Suppression Costs, Strategies for Cost
Management.'' The panel recommended seven primary actions to
contain Federal fire suppression costs.
Unfortunately, the Inspector General's report fails to make
these recommendations a priority for the Forest Service and
instead infers that cost-shifting to States and local
governments and others is a solution to controlling suppression
costs. It is clearly not a solution. We again urge Congress to
take whatever steps are necessary to assist the Federal
agencies in making the panel's recommendations a reality.
The Western Governors also recently agreed to an updated
implementation plan for the 10-year comprehensive strategy
entitled ``A Collaborative Approach for Reducing Wildfire Risk
to Communities and the Environment.'' Since 2001 the 10-year
strategy has formed the basis for improving forest health and
protecting at-risk communities. The four goals of the 10-year
strategy and the new implementation plan are: to improve the
prevention and suppression of wildfires; reduce hazardous
fuels; restore fire-adapted ecosystems; and promote community
assistance.
The new implementation plan establishes a number of items
to enhance public safety and reduce costs by engaging local
governments and private landowners in the wildland-urban
interface, and we believe a relatively small investment of
Federal resources to support State foresters, county
commissioners, and rural fire departments with the
implementation of the 10-year strategy will return huge savings
in the future, and that by fully implementing the strategy we
can take proactive measures to improve the health of our
forests, prevent catastrophic fires, and protect rural
communities and their economies.
The Congress and the administration should recognize the
consensus that has been constructed in developing the 10-year
strategy and the new implementation plan. Stakeholders in all
levels of government are in agreement and we believe the
Congress and the administration should take advantage of this
widely supported strategy. We ask the Congress to reaffirm the
importance of this collaborative, proactive, and forward-
thinking strategy and instruct the administration to fully
implement it.
Unfortunately, the administration's budget proposals have
repeatedly fallen short of implementing this strategy,
especially its forest restoration and community assistance
goals. The Congress has and needs to continue to maintain these
program budgets as well as carefully consider ways to increase
the resources provided to local, State, tribal, and Federal
land management agencies.
We believe there are substantial steps the Forest Service
and the Department of the Interior can take to control
suppression costs and we will continue to work with the
Congress, our Federal partners, and especially the new Chief of
the Forest Service to protect our rural communities, to improve
the health of our forests, and to control suppression costs.
Mr. Chairman, again I thank you and look forward to
responding to any questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Rowdabaugh follows:]
Prepared Statement of Kirk Rowdabaugh, State Forester of Arizona, on
Behalf of The Western Governors' Association; The National Association
of Counties; The National Association of State Foresters; and The
International Association of Fire Chiefs
Thank you Chairman Bingaman for the opportunity to appear and
present testimony at today's hearing on wildfire cost issues. This
testimony is presented on behalf of the Western Governors' Association.
WGA is an independent, non-partisan organization of Governors from 19
Western states and three U.S.-Flag Islands in the Pacific. WGA is very
pleased to present this testimony on behalf of the National Association
of Counties, the National Association of State Foresters and the
International Association of Fire Chiefs.
Governor Mike Rounds of South Dakota is currently WGA's Chairman
and Governor Janet Napolitano of Arizona is WGA's Lead Governor for
Forest Health. WGA has long-standing policy that it has pursued with
the Administration, the Congress and other partners to prevent fire
suppression costs from overwhelming proactive forest health and cost-
control efforts.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ WGA Policy Resolution 06-9, Improving Forest and Rangeland
Health in the West. ``The active management and restoration treatments
called for in the 10-Year Strategy will require substantial investment
by all levels of government and private citizens if the agreed-to goals
are to be achieved. The Administration should request and the Congress
should provide funding to fully implement the 10-Year Strategy while
ensuring that proactive fuels reduction funds are not sacrificed in
years of high suppression costs. By using proactive approaches to
reduce hazardous fuel, to restore ecosystems and to increase the
capacity of our communities to assist, this nation can eventually
reduce loss of life and property from wildfire catastrophes while
lowering the tremendous suppression costs that are incurred. In
addition, complete funding for the Forest Service's S&PF budget is a
vital part of allowing State Foresters to work across landscape
boundaries to maximize forest health treatments efforts. Finally,
Western Governors fully support implementation of the recommendations
of the WGA-Chaired Strategic Panel for Fire Suppression Costs and
believe they can eventually lead to additional control over wildfire
suppression costs.'' See http://www.westgov.org/wga/policy/06/
ForestHealth.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
usda's inspector general's cost recommendations
I will discuss proactive forest health and cost control efforts
more fully below but want to begin my testimony by addressing the
United States Department of Agriculture Inspector General's Audit that
was released in November 2006.\2\ The audit provides a critical
examination of the costs to the Forest Service for suppressing large
wildfires.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ http://www.usda.gov/oig/webdocs/08601-44-SF.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The audit contains certain useful and overdue recommendations that
are consistent with WGA policy and which we urge the federal agencies
to implement. The Forest Service and the Department of the Interior
should make wildland fire use a large part of their arsenal of tools to
reduce hazardous fuels. If appropriately managed, wildland fire use can
safely improve forest health at low-cost while preventing future
hazardous fuel driven wildfires that greatly increase costs.
Furthermore, the federal agencies should establish controls to assess
the performance of line officers and incident commanders in controlling
costs. The Congress should encourage action by the federal agencies on
these recommendations.
However, there are certain items in the audit that are of great
concern to Western Governors, county commissioners, state foresters and
fire chiefs and we want to make the Congress aware of these concerns.
The Inspector General recommends that the Forest Service seek
clarification from Congress on
1) the responsibilities of both the Forest Service and States
in protecting wildland urban interface (WUI) developments and
other private properties threatened by wildfires, and
2) the need to renegotiate WUI protection responsibilities in
master protection agreements to ensure the fire fighting costs
for WUI protection are equitably and appropriately allocated
between federal and non-federal entities.
The Forest Service has indicated it will attempt to determine if
Congressional intent already exists in current laws regarding WUI
protection responsibilities. If it does not, the Forest Service has
previously stated its intention to seek clarification from the Congress
regarding protection responsibilities in the WUI and on other private
properties that are threatened by wildfires.
We are disturbed by the apparent uncertainty of federal authorities
for their responsibility in managing wildfires on the national forests.
We fail to understand federal confusion on this point as the Forest
Service Manual clearly directs the agency to protect valuable natural
resources, recreational facilities and WUI infrastructure of the
National Forests. Indeed, the federal responsibility to prevent fires
that burned on federal lands from burning adjacent non-federal lands is
clear.
Should the Forest Service seek clarification from Congress of its
responsibility for wildfires burning on the national forests, we
encourage Congress to solicit state and local government and other
perspectives on this important matter. If necessary, Congress should
conduct a fully informed and complete assessment of the cost issues
that relate to wildland fires that: (1) originate and burn solely on
federal land, and, (2) those that originate on federal land and then
escape from federal lands onto neighboring state and private lands.
We strongly believe that state and local governments should not be
expected to share the costs of suppressing wildfires that burn entirely
on federal lands. However, if a federal agency takes aggressive
suppression action on a wildfire that originates on federal land and
later spreads onto non-federal land, a cost-share agreement with state
or local governments is appropriate.
We also urge the Congress to provide prompt and unambiguous
direction to the federal agencies regarding their responsibilities for
the management of the national forests, including the need to control
wildland fires before they are allowed to imperil the lives or
properties on neighboring private lands, or valuable natural resources
on neighboring state lands. The demands of the upcoming fire season
require that both state and federal responsibilities are exceedingly
clear to ensure our rural communities receive the protection they
deserve from fires burning on federal lands.
THE STRATEGIC ISSUES PANEL ON FIRE SUPPRESSION COSTS
The Department of Agriculture Inspector General's report makes
clear its belief that increased suppression expenses in recent years
are linked to growth of the WUI and the increased fire protection
responsibilities that come with that growth. Effective fire suppression
actions are certainly made more complex and difficult when wildland
fires threaten private developments. Fires in the WUI can cost more
than average fires.
The Inspector General, however, appears to have failed to evaluate
or consider some of the most current research and recommendations on
the causes of fire suppression cost increases, and more importantly,
the means to address them. In 2004, on behalf of WGA, I co-chaired the
Strategic Issues Panel on Fire Suppression Costs that was formed by the
Wildland Fire Leadership Council (WFLC). WFLC is a co-chaired by the
Department of Agriculture and the Department of the Interior. Many of
the foremost federal and nonfederal experts on the topic produced a
report entitled ``Large Fire Suppression Costs--Strategies for Cost
Management'' which was endorsed by Western Governors and the WFLC.
Western Governors provided testimony on this cost control review to the
Public Lands and Forests Subcommittee of this Committee in 2005.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ See Testimony of James Caswell, Office of Species Conservation,
State of Idaho and Kirk Rowdabaugh, State Forester of Arizona (Co-
Chairmen, Strategic Issues Panel on Fire Suppression Costs) on behalf
of the Western Governors' Association before the Subcommittee on Public
Lands and Forests of the United States Senate Committee on Energy and
Natural Resources, April 26, 2005. http://www.westgov.org/wga/testim/
costpaneltest4-26-05.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Strategic Issues Panel found that fire suppression expenditures
are overwhelmingly centered on larger fires, whether in the WUI or not.
Rigorous statistical analysis of Forest Service data showed that from
1980 through 2002 small fires (less than 300 acres) managed by the
Forest Service were 98.6 % of all the fires but represented only 6.2%
of all suppression expenditures. Larger fires (greater than 300 acres)
represented only 1.4% of the fires but a whopping 93.8% of all
suppression expenditures.
Total suppression expenditures are strongly correlated (R2=0.76)
with total acreage burned, i.e., large total expenditures are
associated with large acres burned. In fact, two of the most expensive
fires to control in the history of the Forest Service, the 175,000-acre
Tripod Fire (2006) and the 500,000-acre Biscuit Fire (2003) both burned
in very remote locations. The $82 million and $150 million,
respectively, it cost to control these fires was insignificantly
related to WUI protection.\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ ``Large Fire Suppression Costs, Strategies for Cost
Management,'' A Report to the Wildland Fire Leadership Council from the
Strategic Issues Panel on Fire Suppression Costs at 9 (August 26,
2004). http://www.fireplan.gov/reports/2004/costmanagement.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Strategic Issues Panel recommended seven primary actions to
contain federal fire suppression costs. The first recommended action,
to increase the level of accountability for large fire costs and their
impacts by allocating suppression funds on a regional or equivalent
basis was intended to provide incentives to federal agency
administrators for controlling costs. It was this single recommendation
that the Panel believed would provide the greatest cost savings to the
federal government because wildfire costs are driven by management
decisions on the ground.
It is our understanding that the federal agencies have not sought
to implement this recommendation because they believe Congressional
authority is required. We believe very strongly that cost controls can
be achieved, in part, by full implementation of all the recommendations
of the Strategic Issues Panel.
The Inspector General's audit fails to make these recommendations a
priority for the Forest Service and instead infers that cost shifting
to states, local governments and others is a solution to spiraling
suppression costs. Cost shifting is not a solution but rather a
misguided effort to pass the buck on costs when the agencies themselves
have not taken all the practical steps necessary to control them. We
again urge the Congress to take whatever steps are necessary to ensure
the federal agencies make the Panel's recommendations a reality.
THE 10-YEAR COMPREHENSIVE STRATEGY AND COST CONTROL
The Western Governors' Association recently agreed to an updated
Implementation Plan to the 10-Year Comprehensive Strategy ``A
Collaborative Approach for Reducing Wildland Fire Risks to Communities
and the Environment.'' \5\ The Strategy was requested by the Congress
in 2000. Since then, the Strategy and its Implementation Plan have
formed the basis for forest health efforts across the nation and
significant progress has been made on the ground in using locally
driven collaboration and in undertaking landscape level planning and
treatments. The Congress adopted the collaborative approach developed
in the Strategy in its Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ http://www.westgov.org/wga/publicat/TYIP.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The need to develop a revised implementation plan was anticipated
in the text of the first plan. Moreover, the actions items agreed to in
the first plan that the Governors signed with the Secretaries of the
Interior and Agriculture in May 2002 have, for the most part, been
completed. At the urging of WGA's Forest Health Advisory Committee,
which conducted a review of the original plan in 2004, the Governors
updated the plan with the federal agencies, counties, state foresters,
fire chiefs and stakeholders. The goals of the plan remain the same as
in the 10-Year Strategy. A collaborative approach needs to be used to:
Improve Prevention and Suppression of Wildfires
Reduce Hazardous Fuels
Restore Fire-Adapted Ecosystems
Promote Community Assistance
The new Implementation Plan puts additional emphasis in the
following areas:
information sharing and monitoring of accomplishments and
forest conditions to improve transparency;
a long-term commitment to maintaining the essential
resources for the plan;
a landscape-level vision for restoration of fire adapted
ecosystems;
the importance of using fire as a management tool; and
continuing improvements in collaboration.
The new Implementation Plan was endorsed and sent to the Congress
by WGA, the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture, the National
Association of Counties and the National Association of State Foresters
in December 2006.\6\ What continues to be highly notable about the 10-
Year Strategy is the contribution of expertise and endorsements from
WGA's 60-person Forest Health Advisory Committee. These individuals are
listed in Appendix C of the plan and they are some of the preeminent
national experts on fire fighting, forest health treatments before and
after fires and on how small communities need to play a role in this
effort. They range from fire chiefs to timber industry professionals,
from environmentalists to university professors.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ http://www.westgov.org/wga/press/tyip12-6-06.htm.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
When fully implemented, the 10-Year Strategy and the new
Implementation Plan will use proactive measures to improve the health
of our forests to prevent catastrophic wildfires. These efforts require
cross-boundary work, full involvement of states and stakeholders, and,
most importantly, a long-term commitment of time, resources and
manpower. It is large fires that at great speed eat up the resources
appropriated for suppression. So full implementation, with adequate
funding, of all four goals of the 10-year Strategy is a wise and
economical cost-containment strategy. It is substantially cheaper to
thin forests and protect communities in advance than to put out fires
and repair the damage from them after the fact.
Some specifics from the new Implementation Plan under each of its
goals demonstrate the path forward that will help the nation get ahead
of the tremendous escalation in fire suppression costs.
Goal 1--Improve Fire Prevention and Suppression
Performance under this goal will be measured by the federal
agencies based on the percent of wildfires controlled during initial
attack and the number of unwanted human-caused wildfires. Using a
stratified cost index, the agencies will also examine what percent of
fires not contained in initial attack exceed the index. The key action
item under this goal is full implementation of the cost control
recommendations of the Strategic Issues Panel discussed above.
Goal 2--Reduce Hazardous Fuels
Proactive management of the hazardous fuels in our forests is key
to reducing the severity and number of uncontrolled and costly
wildfires. Fuel treatments can be most economically and effectively
carried out if a collaborative approach to plan and implement large-
scale treatments across the landscape (federal, state, tribal, and
private land ownerships) is utilized. By using collaboration, those
acres most in need of treatment because of their condition or location
will be accurately identified. Community Wildfire Protection Plans
(CWPPs) as called for by Congress in the Healthy Forests Restoration
Act are the instrument for expressing the collaborative public will.
The performance measures and tasks in Goal 2 of the new Implementation
Plan push federal and state land managers toward treatment of the acres
most in need of treatment as identified in CWPPs. The new plan will
also provide necessary information on the effectiveness and cost of
fuel treatments.
Performance under Goal 2 of the new plan will be measured as
follows:
Number and percent of WUI acres treated that are identified
in CWPPs and the number and percent of non-WUI acres treated
that are identified through collaboration consistent with the
Implementation Plan.
Number of acres treated per million dollars gross investment
in WUI and non-WUI areas.
Percent of collaboratively identified high priority acres
treated where fire management objectives are achieved as
identified in applicable management plans or strategies.
The action items under Goal 2 of the plan are designed to educate
land managers, the public and the Congress on the value and
effectiveness of fuel treatments. There are a number of questions in
this regard that collaborative teams will answer. Some examples
include: What information from federal land management databases such
as LANDFIRE can be made public so we all can understand if a fuel
treatment made a significant difference or if it was conducted over
multiple land ownerships? Can we develop measures that help us
determine the degree and longevity of fire hazard reduction achieved by
fuel treatments? How do we determine when a fuels treatment meets the
objectives of its plan and what data sources are available to inform
the determination? Once these and other efforts are completed, we
should all understand how to make the hazardous fuel treatments tool
more precise, more effective and more valuable. Most importantly,
collaboratively targeting this tool at the strategic acres most in need
of attention will positively impact the nation's suppression expenses.
Goal 3--Restoration and Post-Fire Recovery of Fire-Adapted Ecosystems
The most significant objective of this goal is that it will lead to
an increase in wildland fire use; an extremely economical method of
undertaking hazardous fuels treatments and reducing suppression costs
if appropriate planning and monitoring are undertaken. For example, the
federal agencies will now be measuring and reporting how many acres
each year are being identified using the collaborative model and
treated using wildland fire use or other fuel treatment methods. Action
items include:
Analyze and recommend improvements to polices, incentive
structures and personnel capacity issues that are barriers to
wildland fire use, mechanical treatments and prescribed fire.
Develop and implement a substantial public education
campaign that emphasizes fire's role in ecosystems and the
benefits of fire management to ecosystems and public health and
safety. This initiative will complement Smokey the Bear's
message of fire safety.
Add information to a revision of the Community Wildfire
Protection Plan Handbook \7\ so that communities can consider
restoration and wildland fire use when developing CWPPs.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ http://www.safnetorg/policyandpressicwpp.cfm
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
During amendments, revisions or updates of federal land and
resource management plans and fire management plans, ensure
those plans consider and incorporate wildland fire use
objectives consistent with the 10-Year Strategy and other
federal policies.
These action items will set the stage for an increase in wildland
fire use. If planned for and carefully monitored, wildland fire use is
a safe and effective means of reducing hazardous fuels and reducing
fire suppression costs.
Goal 4--Promote Community Assistance
A significant part of controlling fire suppression costs is
promoting and reinforcing individual landowner responsibility for
wildfire protection as well as improving local fire department capacity
and training. The new Implementation Plan sets up a number of measures
and action items to enhance safety by engaging WUI communities. For
example, the new plan will measure the following:
Number and percent of communities-at-risk covered by a CWPP
that are reducing their risk from wildland fire. A community is
at reduced risk if it has satisfied at least one of the
following requirements:
1. Recognized as a FIREWISE community or equivalent,
or
2. Enacted a mitigation/fire prevention ordinance, or
3. High priority hazardous fuels identified in a CWPP
or equivalent are reduced or appropriate fuel levels on
such lands are maintained in accordance with a plan.
Percentage of at risk communities who report increased local
suppression capacity as evidenced by:
1. The increasing number of trained and/or certified
fire fighters and crews, or
2. Upgraded or new fire suppression equipment
obtained, or
3. Formation of a new fire department or expansion of
an existing department involved in wildland fire
fighting.
Two action items in Goal 4 are intended specifically to aid WUI
communities in planning and protecting themselves in advance of fire.
One calls for developing a publicly accessible database of local zoning
ordinances and state planning efforts that have successfully reduced
land owner risks associated with wildland fire. This information would,
among other things, be used to develop model CWPPs and wildfire
ordinances. The other action item would provide improved technical
assistance for at-risk communities to develop or update their CWPPs.
Should resources be obtained, the National Association of Counties, the
National Association of State Foresters and the International
Association of Fire Chiefs would be well positioned to provide expert
leadership for these respective initiatives.
Overall 10-Year Strategy Goal--Collaboration
The specific measures and action items in the new Implementation
Plan for the 10-Year Strategy will contribute substantially to wildfire
cost control. Yet, it is the collaborative nature of the entire
Strategy that is essential to success on the ground and in the budget.
The Strategy brings together all the essential partners to help the
nation proactively get ahead of the wildfire threat and reduce the
costs of suppression we face each season. All levels of government from
local fire fighters, to county commissioners to Governors to
Secretaries are engaged. The breadth of support for the Strategy and
the new Implementation Plan from non-governmental stakeholders is
extremely broad and diverse. All of these parties have a role to play
in implementing the plan and ensuring its objectives are met.
The Congress and the Administration need to recognize the consensus
that has been constructed, the cost control aid these measures and
action items can provide, and move with all deliberate speed to fund
and fully implement the recommendations. Western Governors ask the
Congress to reaffirm the importance of this collaborative, proactive
and forward thinking 10-Year Strategy that Congress called for in 2000.
The Congress should direct the federal agencies to make
implementation of the new plan among its highest priorities. Due
diligence to comprehensively and collaboratively accomplish all four
goals of the Strategy should be required. Restoration and Community
Assistance are no less valuable in contributing to forest health and
cost control then are Reducing Hazardous Fuels and Improving Prevention
and Suppression. These are interrelated objectives and should be
treated as equal priority items if the Congress and the Administration
are of a mind set that they desire to seriously address fire
suppression cost control at this time.
RE-CAP OF WGA, NACO, NASF AND IAFC VIEWS ON CONGRESSIONAL
COST-CONTROL ACTIONS
USDA Inspector General Audit Report--
1) Encourage federal agency action that increases their
ability to safely use wildland fire for hazardous fuel
reduction and restoration purposes.
2) Encourage federal agencies to establish controls to assess
the performance of line officers and incident commanders in
controlling costs.
3) Solicit state and local government and other views should
the Forest Service seek clarification of its wildfire
suppression responsibilities.
4) If necessary, conduct a fully informed and complete
assessment of cost issues related to wildland fire on public
lands.
5) Promptly provide unambiguous direction to federal agencies
regarding their responsibility to manage public lands and
prevent wildfires that originate therein from imperiling the
safety, land and property of other landowners.
Strategic Issues Panel on Fire Suppression Costs--
1) Take whatever steps are necessary to provide authority and
assist the federal agencies to ensure they fully implement the
cost control recommendations of the Panel.
10-Year Comprehensive Strategy--
1) Reaffirm the importance of this collaborative, proactive
and cost-controlling Strategy that Congress initiated in 2000.
2) Direct the federal agencies to make the new Implementation
Plan of the 10-Year Strategy one of their highest priorities.
3) Direct the federal agencies to make collaboration and each
of the other four goals of the Strategy--Improve Prevention and
Suppression, Reduce Hazardous Fuels, Restore Fire-Adapted
Ecosystems and Promote Community Assistance--of equal priority
for accomplishment.
Western Governors appreciate this Committee's consideration of our
views on this vitally important topic. We will continue to work with
you and the federal agencies to improve the health of our forests and
control fire suppression costs.
THE FOREST SERVICE BUDGET AND LEADERSHIP TRANSITION
Preliminary information indicates the 2007 wildfire season will be
a challenging one for the federal agencies responsible for wildfire
protection. This challenge will present itself not only in terms of
fire intensity, but also in terms of cost. Predictions already point to
a suppression cost crunch mid-season.
This is not a new phenomena or trend. Continuing droughts, climate
change and overly dense stands of trees and wildfire fuels point to
continued suppression cost increases. At the same time, the Forest
Service is trying to address other critical national issues such as
invasive species, energy development and recreation pressures on our
National Forests. In the face of these immense challenges, the Forest
Service has faced an essentially flat budget since 2001.
As we have detailed in this testimony, we believe there are
substantial steps the Forest Service and Department of the Interior can
take to control suppression costs. At the same time, the Congress needs
to carefully consider and find a way to increase the budget resources
dedicated to fire and forest management activities provided to the
federal wildland fire agencies given the growing responsibilities that
the Congress and the nation entrust to them.
Before closing, we would also like to take a moment to acknowledge
the leadership change at the Forest Service. Chief Dale Bosworth will
be officially retiring from the USFS in just a few days after forty-
plus years of service to the agency and the country. We thank him for
his service and his six years as Chief during a period that has proven
to be quite momentous for the agency. Chief Bosworth has been a strong
partner with us in establishing the 10-Year Strategy, implementing
stewardship contracts and developing Community Wildfire Protection
Plans, among other initiatives.
We are also pleased with the selection of the new Chief, Gail
Kimbell, the first woman to lead the Forest Service. Ms. Kimbell's
track record shows an understanding of collaboration and community
involvement. We believe these will serve the agency well as it re-
commits itself to the 10-Year Strategy and a strong partnership with
state and local government.
Mr. Chairman, thank you again for this opportunity to present the
views of the Western Governors, county commissioners, state foresters,
and fire chiefs.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Our cleanup hitter today is James Caswell and, since he is
from Idaho, Senator Craig would like to make a few comments by
way of introduction of this witness.
Senator Craig. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Certainly Jim is well qualified in the role that he is
playing here as co-chair of the Strategic Issues Panel on Fire
Suppression. I first met Jim and worked with him when he was
supervisor of the Clearwater, I think, before he went to the
dark side of State government. I think then-Governor Kempthorne
asked him to come down and create, what is it, Office of
Species Management or something in that category.
But anyway, certainly Jim has got the kind of experience in
fire management and looking at the broad perspective versus the
individual incident situation that I think gives him the
expertise to be a valuable witness. We are pleased to have you
with us today, Jim. Thank you.
STATEMENT OF JAMES CASWELL, CO-CHAIR, STRATEGIC ISSUES PANEL ON
FIRE SUPPRESSION COSTS
Mr. Caswell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the
committee, and thank you for the opportunity to appear and
present testimony on the findings of the Strategic Issues Panel
on Fire Suppression Costs. The full text of my testimony has
been provided to the committee for the record.
The panel's work was chartered by WFLC in early 2004 and we
completed our report in August 2004. I appear before the
committee today in my role as co-chair of that panel. I
testified before the Public Lands and Forests Subcommittee of
the committee on the same topic in April 2005.
The barriers and obstacles to cost containment remain as
pertinent today as they were 3 years ago, and likewise the
panel's findings and recommendations are also still pertinent,
maybe even more so given last year's statistics. The panel
concluded that the most--that most of what is knowable about
fire costs, particularly large fire costs and their management,
is really already known. We came to that conclusion because we
reviewed some 12 reports over the last decade. We interviewed a
multitude of witnesses from all kinds of various interests and
we analyzed more than 300 past recommendations that have been
made on how to control costs, and they spanned the gauntlet
from tactical, operational, to strategic.
At the end of the day, we decided to be very strategic and
go on the side of the vital few recommendation as opposed to
the trivial many. So we developed seven recommendations. I just
want to summarize those very quickly for the committee. The
first recommendation and, by the way, the one that we really
feel is the most important--and I might add that all of these
recommendations in our view need to be implemented together.
Now, you can implement them separately, but at the end of the
day we felt if you are going to stem the rise--and we are never
going to turn it around--but if you can stem the rise of the
increasing costs, that these seven recommendations, if
implemented holistically, would have the best opportunity to
really do that.
The first one was to increase the level of accountability
and interest for large fire costs and their impacts by
allocating suppression funds in a different way. We suggested
regionally or in some type of--on some type of equivalent
basis, when you look at all five of the wildland fire Federal
agencies.
No. 2, is to set policy and direction on agency land and
resource management planning and to incorporate cost management
on large wildfires.
No. 3, dealt with plan, budget, and manage resources
effectively for large fire suppression such that initial
response and extended attack are not compromised. This is a
drawdown issue.
No. 4, was to ensure that the initial responses are always
aggressive and driven by the principle of utilizing the closest
appropriate resources, including local and Federal--local and
tribal resources, I am sorry.
The fifth was to incorporate fuels management and future
fire management cost considerations when planning all resource
management projects on both public and private lands.
Sixth was to commit to improving the fire cost data
infrastructure. Data is one of the areas that is boring, but it
is terribly important, and right now it is difficult to add up
the numbers. In fact, you cannot do it across the Department,
between the two Federal Departments.
Seven was to develop and use a benefit-cost means--measure
as the core measure of suppression, as opposed to this cost per
acre.
The panel's recommendations, with caveats and amendment,
were adopted by WFLC in December 2004. Since that time the
agencies have and continue to make progress in implementation
kind of across the board. In fact, you heard Secretary Rey
allude to some of those today. However, recommendation one,
leadership commitment and accountability, has not moved forward
in full and the panel believes this recommendation has the
greatest opportunity for suppression cost savings.
Some progress has clearly been made and I urge the
committee to seek a status report from the agency on all
recommendations, and in particular recommendation A.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will stand for questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Caswell follows:]
Prepared Statement of James Caswell, Co-Chair, Strategic Issues Panel
on Fire Suppression Costs and Director, Office of Species Conservation,
State of Idaho
Thank you Chairman Bingaman and other distinguished members of this
Committee for the opportunity to appear and present testimony for
today's hearing on wildfire suppression costs. My name is Jim Caswell,
I served with the U.S. Forest Service for 28 years and I am currently
the Director of the Governor of Idaho's Office of Species Conservation.
In addition to my duties for the State of Idaho, in 2004, I was asked
by then-Governor Kempthorne to represent the Western Governors'
Association as a co-chair of the Strategic Issues Panel on Fire
Suppression Costs. The Wildland Fire Leadership Council or WFLC, led by
the Departments of the Interior and Agriculture, chartered the Panel in
early 2004 to ``explore specific strategic issues associated with large
fire costs, including the relationship of fire to vegetation management
and land and resource management plans.'' \1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Large Fire Suppression Costs: Strategies for Cost Management, A
Report to the Wildland Fire Leadership Council From the Strategic
Issues Panel on Fire Suppression Costs (August 2004).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I appear before the Committee today in my role as Co-Chair of the
Panel. In April 2005, I testified before the Public Lands and Forests
Subcommittee of this Committee on the same topic. I am pleased to
reiterate that testimony today and provide some perspective on cost
control developments since that time. However, on the issue of to what
extent the federal agencies have implemented the Panel's 2004
recommendations, this Committee should seek full information from the
federal agencies on the exact extent of their actions since that time.
THE STRATEGIC ISSUES PANEL ON FIRE SUPPRESSION COSTS
The need for focusing on the costs of large fire is clear. Fire
suppression expenditures are overwhelmingly centered on larger fires.
``From 1980 through 2002 small fires (less than 300 acres) managed by
the Forest Service totaled 98.6 % of the fires reported but represented
only 6.2% of the total suppression expenditures. Larger fires (greater
than 300 acres) represented 1.4% of the fires reported and a whopping
93.8% of the suppression expenditures.'' \2\ Those basic percentages
remain the same today.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Id. at 6.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
``Unwillingness to take greater risks [in operational fire
suppression decision-making] , unwillingness to recognize that
suppression techniques are sometimes futile, the `free' nature of
wildland fire suppression funding, and public and political
expectations are all potential contributors to the underlying causes
for the high cost of large fires.'' \3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The WFLC charter for the Panel explicitly identified five areas for
examination:
1. Barriers and obstacles to cost containment;
2. Strategies for cost containment success;
3. Impediments to equitable sharing of suppression and cost
apportionment among jurisdictions;
4. Criteria to measure cost containment success; and,
5. Relationships of fire management plans and resource
management plans to suppression costs.
Fourteen individuals representing a broad spectrum of fire fighting
interests, including the federal government, worked collaboratively
over a four-month period and met multiple times face-to-face to develop
the Panel's final report. The Panel
examined the last five years' reports related to suppression
costs;
interviewed a wide variety of people and groups, including
researchers, special interests, fire managers, and other
government officials; and
analyzed more than 300 past recommendations
to better understand the issues and to develop strategic actions that
met the intent of the Panel's charter. The Panel's report was presented
to the WFLC in July 2004.
While there have been many reports on this topic in the past that
have led to efficiencies in managing the costs of large fires, those
efforts have, at best, provided marginal cost reductions. The Panel's
report, unlike these earlier efforts, seeks to substantively address
the underlying causes of large fire suppression costs. It is this
important distinction that WGA believes makes the Panel's report
extremely valuable. Recognizing this, Western Governors commended the
report to the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture soon after
its completion.\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Western Governors' Association letter of November 8, 2004 to
Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton and Secretary of Agriculture Ann
M. Veneman. http://www.westgov.org/wga/initiatives/fire/cost-ltr11-8-
04.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The strategic and interdependent recommendations set forth in the
Panel's report are as follows:
A. Increase the level of accountability and interest for
large fire costs and their impacts by allocating suppression
funds on a regional or equivalent basis.
B. Set policy and direction on agency land/resource
management planning to incorporate cost management on large
wildfires.
C. Plan, budget, and manage resources effectively for large
fire suppression, such that resources for effective initial
response and extended attack are not compromised.
D. Ensure initial responses are always aggressive and driven
by the principle of utilizing the closest appropriate
resources, including those of local and tribal governments.
E. Incorporate fuels management and future fire management
cost considerations when planning all resource management
projects for public and private lands.
F. Commit to improving the fire cost data infrastructure as a
prerequisite step toward improving accountability and
strengthening fire management performance.
G. Develop and use a benefit cost measure as the core measure
of suppression cost effectiveness.
The following are the recommendations as taken from the Panel's
report including the necessary components of each recommendation as
well as the goals each recommendation seeks to achieve.
A. Leadership, Commitment and Accountability
Increase the level of accountability for and interest in large fire
costs and their impacts by allocating suppression funds on a regional
or equivalent basis and by providing direct incentives that will help
change suppression management behavior. Create a dedicated group of
agency administrators representing local and regional levels, and at
least one member of the Panel, to develop operational rules and
oversight procedures. Components of this recommendation include:
Allocate suppression funds to regions or logical
geographical divisions.
Use predictive-based budgeting, as opposed to the current
system of 10-year moving averages, as the basis for allocation.
The 10-year average will not provide sufficient funds to
implement this recommendation.
Establish special relief provisions for ``mega'' or
``extreme'' large wildfires, i.e., establish reasoned estimates
for reasonably anticipated levels of funding.
Create and manage a national suppression reserve from
allocated suppression funds. Eliminate ``severity funding,'' as
it is known today.
Provide incentives for staying within allocated amounts by
allowing up to 51% of ``savings'' to be used for other fire-
related projects. Set provisions for the remaining 49% of
savings to be returned to the national suppression reserve.
Require each region or logical geographic division to
contribute a co-payment to the wildland fire suppression
expenditure before granting access to the national suppression
reserve.
Improve adjacent agency partnerships to co-manage the funds.
Combine allocations where practical and feasible.
Increase regional tracking and reporting of suppression
expenditures. Establish a Headquarters' comptroller, who
reports directly to the agency administrator (not the fire
organization), explicitly for suppression cost allocations,
monitoring, and suppression reserve management.
Generally, cost considerations take a back seat to firefighter and
public safety and environmental concerns. While this hierarchy of
concern is appropriate, cost considerations are never brought to the
forefront. Costs and cost effectiveness have rarely been regarded as a
priority for the federal wildland fire suppression organizations. As a
result, most agency administrators have operated under the current
system with a sense of having essentially a blank check. The lack of
accountability for costs creates the climate that leads to increasing
costs of wildland fire suppression. The goal of this recommendation,
therefore, is to create the accountability that is missing and the
incentives for land managers to consider costs.
The Panel strongly believed that Recommendation A will provide the
greatest amount of cost savings, if fully implemented.
B. Resource/Land Management Planning (R/LMPs) and their Relationships
to Fire Management Planning (FMPs)
Set policy and direction on agency land/resource management
planning to incorporate cost management on large wildfires. Components
of this recommendation include:
Display the anticipated wildland fire suppression costs in
R/LMPs for each alternative proposed, including the no-action
alternative.
Establish the expectations in R/LMPs and FMPs for costs of
implementing the plans by recognizing the probability of large
fire occurrence and specifying acceptable losses, given the
land management direction established.
Where state, local, and tribal governments have established
effective cost management guidance, consider it in the agency
planning process.
Without the consideration of cost in the planning process, costs
are simply a result of the incident and nothing else should be expected
since nothing else was planned. The goal is the establishment of a
``line of sight'' from land management planning through FMP preparation
and on into the Wildland Fire Situation Analyses that incorporates cost
management as a priority. R/LMPs must recognize the wildland fire
behavior conditions its decisions create.
C. Sustaining Initial and Extended Attack Capability
Plan, budget and manage resources effectively for large fire
suppression such that resources for effective initial response and
extended attack are not compromised. Components of this recommendation
include:
Develop standard procedures to determine minimum resource
levels that need to be maintained for effective initial and
extended attack in each geographic area using predictive
services capabilities based on Energy Release Component, or
other applicable fire danger index.
For those resources not needed to meet the requirements
noted above, develop and establish protocols for national
control and positioning of those resources.
Creating a sustained program means emphasizing both a strong
initial attack and extended attack capability. It must also provide for
increasing state and local capability for efficient support of federal
programs. This entails optimizing funds provided to field units by
ensuring support costs are appropriate for services received. With
maximum financial flexibility to pre-position resources, it is possible
to increase initial attack success with the benefit of containing or
possibly lowering costs.\5\ It is also critical to sustain initial and
extended attack resource capability at the local level by ensuring
consistent budgeting for preparedness resources. This element would
involve a cohesive, long-term budget strategy that includes
preparedness, emergency suppression, fuels management, and state and
local fire assistance in order to implement an effective, cost-
efficient fire management program.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ Title II of the National Drought Preparedness Act of 2005 (S.
802) seeks to address an inherent flaw in wildfire suppression funding
administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
regarding pre-positioning. Currently, FEMA has authority to reimburse
states for pre-positioning equipment to combat wildfires. This
reimbursement is available only for a two-week period following a FEMA
declaration. However, this current authority actually acts as a
disincentive to states to provide pre-positioned resources. When states
proactively and effectively extinguish a fire before it becomes an
emergency, they do not qualify for reimbursement. In such a case, FEMA
does not make an emergency declaration because there is no emergency.
Conversely, when state efforts fail at initial containment and a large
fire ensues, they are reimbursed by FEMA. Title II of the National
Drought Preparedness Act contains language that would ameliorate this
disincentive by amending existing FEMA authority under the Robert T.
Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 5131
et seq.).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
D. Initial Attack and Extended Attack Response
Ensure initial responses are always aggressive and driven by the
principle of utilizing the closest appropriate resources, including
those of local and tribal governments. Components of this
recommendation include:
Use all available local resources in wildfire suppression
strategy to create an integrated and coordinated response to
wildland fire.
Form local Type 3 Incident Management Teams to manage
initial and extended attack operations locally rather than rely
on mobilization of Type 1 and Type 2 teams. Develop agreements
with local, state and federal agencies that establish local
Type 3 teams.
Focus meaningful federal and state agencies' financial
support and provide appropriate technical assistance to
strengthen local resources and assure their availability on a
wildfire incident.
Enhanced firefighting preparedness and increased interagency
coordination at the local level will improve the cost effectiveness of
federal and local wildland firefighting efforts. An effective local
department that is prepared to act immediately or in cooperation with
other agencies to suppress wildfires can attack and contain wildfires
on adjacent state and federal land, often before state and federal
forces arrive. They can also provide much-needed assistance to large
state and federal wildfires, reducing national mobilization costs for
federal agencies and lowering overall suppression expenditures.
Increasing the skills and availability of locally based Type 3
teams will lead to effective extended attack. When successful, the need
for mobilization of higher cost Type 1 or 2 teams is negated.
Additionally, the development of Type 3 teams that use local
firefighters and support (regardless of agency) extensively will reduce
costs in a variety of ways: the teams could take command, coordinate an
effective extended attack, order necessary resources, and provide for
safety through increased supervision, command and control. Most
importantly, these teams will have knowledge of the local conditions
and landscapes that will help them make good informed decisions. Within
the first few hours of a fire-start, they can be very effective in
controlling the fire quickly by establishing a competent management
organization.\6\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ See, The Changing Role and Needs of Local, Rural, and Volunteer
Fire Departments in the Wildland-Urban Interface: Recommended Actions
for Implementing the 10-Year Comprehensive Strategy, An Assessment and
Report to Congress (June 2003). http://www.stateforesters.org/pubs/
Final%20Rural%20Fire%20Report.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
E. Landscape Fuels Management for Public, Tribal and Private Lands
Incorporate fuels management and future fire management cost
considerations when planning all resource management projects for
public and private lands. Components of this recommendation include:
For Public and Tribal Lands
Develop interagency protocols that identify and report acres
of hazardous fuels reduction from wildland fire.
Require analysis of burned-over areas and adopt active
management strategies to ensure that excessive fuels do not
accumulate again.
After large wildfires, re-evaluate the impacts and
feasibility of adopting strategies that use the recently burned
areas as boundaries for less costly wildland fire use.
Incorporate the opportunity presented by the wildfire into the
unit fuels strategy.
For Private Lands
Engage communities and property owners in creating
defensible space around structures, and appropriate land use,
zoning and construction methods/standards for structures
situated in fire hazard areas.
Strive to make R/LMPs and FMPs into national, comprehensive
interagency and intergovernmental wildland vegetation defensive
management plans.
I want to put particular emphasis on the fact that the Panel also
found that a paradigm shift in thinking about hazardous fuels reduction
effectiveness is required and can be started by ceasing to use acres
treated as a ``results'' measurement for program accomplishments.
Despite some recent increases in funding for fuel treatments, it is
apparent that current fuels reduction strategies are not able to
address the full magnitude and scope of the fuels problem.
Collectively, the integration of wildland fire risk mitigation measures
into all resource management activities, a shift in suppression tactics
and greater emphasis on post-fire fuel characteristics may reduce the
overall costs of suppression, while ensuring the protection of high
values-at-risk.
Solutions must address how to create a politically viable,
collaborative effort to manage the landscape and mitigate fire risks
within and around the wildland/urban interface.
F. Fire Cost Management Data Needs
Commit to improving the fire cost data infrastructure as a
prerequisite step toward improving accountability and strengthening
fire management performance. Necessary components of this
recommendation include:
Wildland fire management agencies should begin developing a
more complete fire database and management information system.
Forest Service Research and Development, in partnership with
the fire agencies, should develop and maintain this database
and develop a regular series of peer-reviewed reports and
analyses that track cost patterns and influences over time.
Establish an effective national fire-related information
technology/information management framework under the guidance
of the WFLC.
Develop an integrated database for all federal, state, and
local agencies involved in the collection of wildland fire data
that allows for sharing information across agencies and
provides for a consolidation report on wildland fire response.
The absence of information inhibits the ability to improve program
management and contain costs. Not knowing fully what wildfires cost--
and why--cripples credibility and accountability at all levels
throughout the organization and with external stakeholders. Before cost
management can become an integral part of the fire culture, similar to
safety and stewardship, data and meaningful information on costs and
cost management performance will have to be made readily available.
Data problems are not confined to suppression expenditures. Data on
actual fuels treatment expenditures and treatment characteristics are
also absent. Information maintained in the National Fire Plan
Operations and Reporting System (NFPORS) contains planned--not actual--
costs, and data are collected to report progress rather than evaluate
and analyze actual results. Without better data on actual costs and
their drivers, the agencies cannot assess their firefighting
effectiveness or the efficiency with which they are managing costs.
G. Cost Management Metrics
Develop and use a benefit cost measure as the core measure of
suppression cost effectiveness. Necessary components of this
recommendation include:
Measure should be supported by a comprehensive analysis of
wildland fire suppression expenditures and losses averted.
Analysis should be supported with a comprehensive knowledge
base of fire management costs, suppression cost drivers, and
values-at-risk.
Losses averted and suppression costs should be estimated and
compared on every fire greater than 300 acres, using defensible
methodology for estimation of values-at-risk and scientific
fire behavior predictions for estimating the extent of fire
involvement in the absence of control.
Benefit/cost ratios should be tracked over time and across
regions and forests to assess trends.
Performance measures need to encourage managers to balance costs
and protection objectives and to inform the public and government
officials with a more complete picture for public debate. Without
reliable and clear performance measures and cost information, land and
fire managers may be compelled to select suppression alternatives to
reduce potential negative impacts regardless of the cost.
Needed is a measure that helps evaluate the benefits and costs of
suppression alternatives. Cost management involves not only minimizing
the cost of suppression inputs and assuring their productive
deployment, but also making sure that the total value of the cost and
losses averted is in line with the direct and indirect costs of
protecting those values. To bring the costs and benefits of an activity
into an acceptable balance, managers of the activity can either
increase the benefits or decrease the costs.
NEXT STEPS: IMPLEMENTATION OF THE RECOMMENDATIONS AND
CONGRESSIONAL ACTIONS
The WFLC discussed implementation of the Panel's recommendations at
their December 2004 meeting. An overall review of the recommendations
by WFLC staff concluded that most of the report would be feasible to
implement, if agency leadership is committed to making implementation
of the Panel's recommendations a priority. However, resources at the
agencies are stretched thin. Staff noted at the time that most of the
people who should be assigned to implementation are also involved in
other high priority interagency assignments.
WFLC went forward, and with some caveats and amendments, adopted
the bulk of the recommendations of the Panel, and I commended them for
doing so.\7\ However, on Recommendation A: ``Leadership, Commitment and
Accountability,'' where the Panel believes there is the greatest
opportunity for suppression cost saving, WFLC was not able to move
forward in full. In part, WFLC had concerns that certain components of
the recommendations would require Congressional action to implement.
The following were noted:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ See Wildland Fire Leadership Council, Summary Decisions and
Action Items, Emmitsburg, Maryland, December 2004 at http://
www.fireplan.gov/leadership/120704.html
To create a national suppression reserve and thereby
eliminate severity funds, Congressional approval might be
required to allow reprogramming from suppression to
preparedness and to create the national-level fund.
Congressional approval was also noted as necessary to allow
a co-payment from a federal land manager to the wildland fire
suppression expenditure before granting access to the national
suppression reserve. Appropriations law prohibits augmentation
of one account with funds appropriated for a different purpose.
To provide incentives to regional managers to stay within
allocated suppression costs by allowing them to use part of any
savings on other fire-related projects, Congressional approval
was also noted as necessary, given the prohibition against
moving appropriated funds from one budget line-item to another
(e.g., from suppression to forest restoration) without prior
approval.\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ I want to especially note that the federal agencies have
resisted this important and very valuable notion of ``incentives''
since the Panel made its recommendations. I understand that some of the
components of Recommendation A were evaluated by the federal agencies.
Providing incentives was not included in these efforts. Providing
incentives for staying within allocated amounts by allowing up to 51%
of ``savings'' to be used for other fire-related projects is something
the Panel and I feel would have a significant impact on fire management
behavior.
As I did in the April 2005 testimony, I urge appropriate
Congressional leadership to sit down with the Administration and
determine how the impediments to full implementation of Recommendation
A may be overcome. If Congress and the Administration want to make a
serious and concerted effort to contain large-fire costs, I urge you to
strongly consider making the legal changes necessary for suppression
cost savings to become a reality. Moreover, given the interrelated
nature of all the recommendations, I again urge the Congress to closely
track and review progress made by the Administration in implementing
each of the Panel's recommendations.
The Panel itself reconvened twice in the first half of 2006 to
review agency progress on implementing our recommendations. Other
panels I am familiar with are usually not inclined to reconvene of
their own volition after completing their charge. The Panel on Fire
Suppression Costs is and I believe it speaks to the commitment of all
the Panel members that our work would help address this problem if the
agencies were committed to implementing all of the recommendations we
developed.
Some progress has clearly been made and I urge this Committee to
seek a status report from the agencies in that regard. Unfortunately,
it was clear to me at the Panel's most recent meetings that the
agencies had not yet sought Congressional assistance in fully
implementing Recommendation A ``Leadership, Commitment and
Accountability,'' where, I reiterate, the Panel believed there was the
greatest opportunity for suppression cost savings.
CONCLUSION
Wildland fire suppression expenditures have been increasing over
the past two decades and have exceeded the $1 billion mark in three of
the last six years. The states' share of spending on suppression has
increased commensurately. These increasing costs for wildland fire
suppression threaten to topple all the efforts of the National Fire
Plan, 10-Year Strategy, Healthy Forests Initiative and Healthy Forests
Restoration Act. Pervasive droughts, over-stocked forests, and an
expanding population base will only exacerbate the societal, economic
and natural impacts and costs of wildfire suppression.
High suppression costs drain funding for other proactive forest
health management efforts called for by the forest health policies and
programs mentioned above. Austere federal budget estimates make it more
important than ever to pursue strategic containment of suppression
costs. With forests, as with people, preventive medicine is the most
cost efficient approach. For example, a Colorado State University study
put direct and indirect loses to people and the environment from
Colorado's 2003 Hayman Fire at $230 million, or alternatively nearly $
1,700/acre. In contrast, fuel reduction costs range from $200-$1,500/
acre, depending on proximity to homes in the wildland-urban
interface.\9\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ See, Journal of Forestry, September 2004, vol. 102, no. 6, pp.
42-49.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
By using the proactive approaches called for in the 10-Year
Strategy and its new Implementation Plan to reduce hazardous fuel,
restore ecosystems and increase the capacity of our communities to
assist,\10\ this nation can eventually reduce loss of life and property
from wildfire catastrophes while lowering the tremendous suppression
costs that are incurred.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ See, http://www.westgov.org/wga/publicat/TYIP.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Real savings in the suppression budget will not happen overnight.
Only with strong and sustained leadership from the Congress and the
Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior can significant reductions
in the costs of suppression of large fires be achieved. The Panel
believes those savings are achievable if the recommendations put
forward are fully implemented. As the Panel states, true suppression
expenditure savings will only be achieved by focusing on strategic cost
considerations as set forth in their recommendations, not on tactical
cost considerations, such as the apportionment of suppression costs
between all involved governmental jurisdictions. The recommendations
may require certain legal changes and they most definitely require a
change in the status quo of the agencies fire-fighting operations and
mind set. The Panel believes the time for these changes has come. We
hope the Congress and the Administration agree.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
I will have some questions, but I will have to submit them
in writing. I am not able to stay for a longer period. Let me
just ask Senator Craig if he wanted to ask questions now or if
he wants to submit his in writing as well.
Senator Craig. I think my time is going to have to be
treated like yours, Mr. Chairman. I will submit a couple of
questions in writing.
Gentlemen, thank you very much.
The Chairman. Well, I thank these three witnesses very
much. I think this has been a useful hearing and we have a lot
of good recommendations to try to respond to and follow up on.
So thank you very much and that will conclude our hearing.
[Whereupon, at 11:38 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
APPENDIXES
----------
Appendix I
Responses to Additional Questions
----------
[Responses to the following questions were not received at
the time this hearing went to press:]
Questions for Phyllis Fong From Senator Bingaman
Question 1. Your cost-containment report recommends that the
agencies seek clarification of their WUI-protection responsibilities
from Congress. But your report seems to suggest that the Federal policy
is in fact clearit just hasn't been followed. Can you clarify whether
the Federal Wildland Fire Policy is unclear with regard to who has
primary responsibility to protect structures in the WUI?
Question 2. Your cost-containment report recommends, among other
things, that State and local governments shoulder a greater share of
costs of suppressing fires, even when they burn entirely on Federal
lands. Can you explain why non-Federal entities should bear costs for
fire suppression activities on Federal land?
Question 3. You recommended that the Committee find ways to
encourage State and local governments to establish and enforce
``Firewise'' protections to reduce wildfire damages and costs. Please
comment on any steps OIG feels the Committee and Federal Government
might consider.
Question 4. The Western Governors' Association testimony states
that your report failed to evaluate or consider certain reports that
presented conclusions on fire suppression costs contrary to those of
the OIG. Please comment on this statement; if the studies referenced in
the WGA testimony were not considered by OIG, please provide a brief
response to the key findings therein about why fire suppression costs
are increasing.
______
Questions for Robin Nazarro From Senator Bingaman
Question 1. A number of GAO and other reports have pointed to the
Fire Program Analysis system as an important tool for cost-containment.
It is my understanding that the agencies are reevaluating their plans
to complete FPA, and that has caused many observers significant
concern. Your testimony indicates that the agencies may no longer be
planning to complete all of FPA's key goals. Can you explain what those
goals are and why they are important?
Question 2. You stated that the agencies have made little progress
in determining the quantity and type of firefighting resources they
need. In your opinion, why is this important and what steps could the
agencies take to improve their ability to make this determination?
Question 3. In your statement, you reiterated your previous
recommendation that the agencies develop a cohesive strategy to reduce
fuels and respond to wildland fires. You further said that completing
such a strategy is an essential step if the agencies are to contain
costs. How would completing a cohesive strategy help the agencies
contain costs?
Question 4. In your statement, you said that the agencies were
updating their cost-sharing guidance, but that it is unclear how
agencies will ensure that guidance is followed. What are your concerns?
______
Questions for Mark Rey From Senator Bingaman
Question 1. Do you agree with GAO's preliminary observation that
the effectiveness of the actions you have taken to control wildland
fire costs may be limited because you have not defined your goals and
strategies for achieving them? If so, what are your plans for taking
these steps?
Question 2. You agreed with GAO's recommendations that a cohesive
strategy was needed for reducing fuels and responding to wildland
fires, but you stated that you could not develop such a strategy until
you first developed better data. It is my understanding that the Fire
Program Analysis tool (FPA) is a key effort in obtaining this data and
was intended to allow the agencies to ``optimize,'' or identify the
most cost-effective mix of firefighting personnel and equipment that
best utilize any given budget allocation. GAO testified that the
agencies recently completed a ``midcourse review'' of FPA that resulted
in the Wildland Fire Leadership Council endorsing design modifications
to FPA.
a. Under this modified version of FPA, will the agencies be
able to determine the optimum mix of firefighting resources for
a given budget level, or will it instead identify alternatives
that may not include the best solution?
b. What effect will this midcourse review have on time frames
and funding needed to complete FPA?
Question 3. Do you believe that significant improvements in local
capacity and utilization for initial attack are necessary to achieve
maximum cost-effectiveness in wildfire management operations?
Question 4. What steps has the Federal government taken to
encourage ``firewise'' practices? Do you believe that the Federal
government should take additional steps to encourage ``firewise''
practices? If so, what?
Question 5. Dr. Jack Cohen and others have concluded that a home's
risk of burning in a wildfire can be most effectively and efficiently
reduced by controlling the characteristics of the home itself and the
landscape within a couple of hundred feet of the home. Does the
Administration agree with Dr. Cohen's conclusions?
Question 6. The Inspector General's Office recently recommended
that the Forest Service, in conjunction with other Federal wildland
fire management agencies, modify the current policies to allow wildland
fire managers to move between suppression and Wildland Fire Use tactics
as conditions change on an incident (see p. 18 of the Audit Report).
The agency responded that it would modify its AMR policies to allow
managers to employ multiple strategies concurrently and to move between
various tactics as conditions change by April 30, 2007. It is unclear
from the agency's response, however, whether the modifications the
agency intends to make will include the specific change recommended by
the Inspector General's Office. Can you clarify whether the agency
agrees with the Inspector General's recommendation that the current
policies should be modified to allow wildland fire managers to move
between suppression and Wildland Fire Use tactics as conditions change
on an incident? If so, does the agency intend to complete that
modification by April 30, 2007?
Question 7. Secretary Rey: virtually all of the reports we are
discussing here today state that shortcomings in the Forest Service's
data collection and management is a significant barrier to implementing
cost-containment strategies. These assessments are consistent with
dozens of reports on other matters that also point to the Forest
Service's performance and financial management as one of the most
serious problems facing the agency. What are you doing to address this
problem?
Question 8. Please provide a detailed status report on the
implementation of each of the key recommendations in the Large Fire
Suppression Costs Report to WFLC.
______
Questions for Nina Rose Hatfield From Senator Bingaman
Question 1. Many of the reports discussed at the hearing emphasize
the importance of developing and utilizing local resources for initial
attack as a cost-containment strategy. Do you agree that local capacity
and utilization is an important element of a comprehensive cost-
containment strategy?
Question 2. Your testimony indicated that two-thirds of development
is occurring in the wildland-urban interface. How do you define the
wildland-urban interface for purposes of that statistic? Is there a
single definition of the wildland-urban interface that the agencies use
for all of their programs?
Question 3. Can you describe what positive incentives are in place
to encourage wildland fire managers to contain wildfire costs?
Question 4. LANDFIRE is partially implemented and is scheduled for
completion in 2009. Given the frequency with which landscape-altering
events have been occurring, such as wildland fires and hurricanes, what
plans do you have for keeping the LANDFIRE data current and how much do
you anticipate that will cost?
Question 5. The Large Fire Suppression Costs report that Mr.
Caswell testified about states that the agencies need to ``set policy
and direction'' on agency land and resource management plans and
``display the anticipated wildland fire suppression costs . . . for
each alternative proposed, including the no-action alternative.'' Do
you agree with that recommendation? Please explain why you agree or
disagree, and explain whether and how the Department's agencies are
implementing the recommendation.
Appendix II
Additional Material Submitted for the Record
----------
Statement of Casey Judd, Business Manager, on Behalf of the Federal
Wildland Fire Service Association
INTRODUCTION
The Federal Wildland Fire Service Association (FWFSA) is a nation-
wide employee association whose membership is primarily comprised of
federal wildland firefighters employed by all five land-management
agencies. Our diverse membership includes firefighters occupying all
positions within each Agency's fire program from entry-level
firefighters to Fire Management Officers (FMOs). This diverse
membership provides the Association with experience and expertise
within the wildland firefighting community unparalled in the country.
It is because of this experience & expertise that the FWFSA believes it
imperative for Congress to hear the voice of our Nation's federal
wildland firefighters as it relates to the ever-increasing costs of
wildfire suppression.
CAUSATION OF SKYROCKETING FIRE SUPPRESSION COSTS
With the utmost respect for those providing oral testimony before
the Committee on January 30, 2007, the federal wildland firefighters in
the field; those risking their lives, cutting the lines, ordering
resources, commanding the incidents and protecting our Nation's natural
resources as well as its citizens' lives & property believe the root
causes of ever-increasing suppression costs have far more to do with
Agency fire program policy than elements presented to the Committee by
others such as weather, WUI, fuels, the number of fire starts etc.
While the FWFSA agrees that the aforementioned elements are just
that, elements that affect such costs, their role is over-stated by the
Agencies with respect to the common sense causes of increasing costs.
The elements and solutions thereto offered by the Agency and others are
complex. Their recommendations, having been suggested year after year
are also complex and would necessitate an extraordinary level of
commitment, communication and cooperation with a multitude of local,
state & federal agencies. The fact that such elements and their
solutions are offered year after year bears this opinion out. Such
solutions/recommendations, if plausible, would take years to exhibit
any effect on lowering costs. Rather, firefighters believe there are a
number of far less complex solutions to the costs of wildfire
suppression. The simple solutions offered in this testimony to the
increasing fire suppression costs not only benefit our firefighters but
our Nation's taxpayers and could lead to annual savings of tens, if not
hundreds of millions of dollars in wildfire suppression costs.
CAUSES & EFFECTS
Although we expect the Agencies and other bureaucratic ``experts''
to suggest our observations and solutions are too simplistic, we
believe Congress is looking to find solutions that can be achieved
promptly providing both short & long-term corrections to the wildfire
suppression cost problem.
The causes & solutions offered by the firefighters doing the work;
those that are in the field and who thus have a significantly better
vantage point in identifying costs than those in Washington, are in
fact simple, yet provide prompt, long-lasting relief to the problem(s)
being addressed. However, the ideas presented in this testimony cannot
work without the express intent & expectation of Congress for the
Agencies to commit to a more cost-effective and cost-efficient way of
doing business.
AGENCY POLICIES INCREASE COSTS NEEDLESSLY
Our testimony focuses on the policies of the Forest Service as it
is the largest employer of federal wildland firefighters in the
country. The following points illustrate some of the policies/actions
of the Agency that adversely impact the cost of fire suppression and in
fact, the overall management of the fire program.
Historically, the Forest Service leadership fails to seek
sufficient funding from the Administration & Congress to fund
all of its projects leading to budget transfers.
Maintaining archaic pay & personnel policies creating severe
recruitment & retention problems
Over-reliance on non-federal resources
Diversion of fire preparedness funds to pay for non-fire
projects
Those making fire policy have little, if any, fire
experience
Failure to staff at 100% Most Efficient Level (MEL)
Regional Offices taking the responsibility of hiring
firefighters away from Forest Fire Management Officers causing
significant & needless delays in recruitment & promotions.
Budget Transfers
For years, Congress has chided the Chief of the Forest Service for
borrowing from non-fire projects to pay for fire and now, borrowing
from fire to pay for non-fire projects. The Agency has consistently
accepted budget proposals from the Administration and suggested to
Congress that it (the Agency) can accomplish its goals with such funds.
The fact of the matter is the Agency leadership has simply failed
to submit realistic funding requests to meet all of its needs. Most
importantly however, the FWFSA firmly believes that the funding levels
currently appropriated & provided by Congress to the Agency for fire
suppression & preparedness are adequate and would not need to be
supplemented if fiscal management was a priority.
Archaic Pay & Personnel Policies
The land management agencies, in concert with The Office of
Personnel Management (OPM) continue to encumber our Nation's federal
wildland firefighters with archaic pay & personnel policies. A number
of reports from a variety of sources illustrate the severe retention &
recruitment problems resulting from antiquated pay and benefit
policies. Recruitment & Retention (R&R) problems have led to the
weakening of our Nation's federal wildland firefighting force
infrastructure and has resulted in the over-reliance by the land-
management agencies on significantly higher-priced non-federal
firefighting resources.
Diversion of Fire Preparedness Funds
Perhaps the most egregious action on the part of the Forest Service
as it relates to the increasing costs of suppression has been the
systematic diversion of fire preparedness funds to non-fire projects.
Over the last several years, amounts in excessive of several hundred
million dollars have been siphoned off by the Forest Service
Headquarters (WO), Regional Offices, Forest Supervisors, District
Rangers and other ``line officers'' from funds appropriated by Congress
for fire preparedness. Whether such funds have been used to help
finance the creation of the ``white elephant'' centralized human
resources center in New Mexico, or gone to pay administrative costs,
cost pools etc., the fact of the matter is, preparedness funds that we
believe Congress has intended to be used for fire preparedness are not
getting to those responsible for ensuring preparedness resources are in
place...our forest fire management officers.
Funds from the fire preparedness budget are designed to provide for
the resources necessary to be properly prepared for any given fire
season. Such resources include temporary firefighters which often
amount to approximately 46% of fire season staffing; dozers,
dispatchers etc.
When Congress approved the National Fire Plan (NFP) several years
ago, part of its spirit & intent was to focus on preparedness so as to
reduce suppression costs. It is sound reasoning. Having sufficient fire
preparedness resources in place during the fire season naturally
promotes the ability of firefighters to keep fires small and
subsequently, less costly. Having proper preparedness resources in
place also reduces the risks to the health & safety of our firefighters
and those they protect. Those attending the hearings on January 30
viewed ``pie charts'' clearly showing that suppression expenditures far
exceeded preparedness expenditures. This is simply upside down.
Mr. Mark Rey, USDA Undersecretary for Natural Resources and the
Environment has testified to Congress that ``while preparedness
allocations have been reduced, suppression funding is up.'' This is a
direct contradiction to the intent of the National Fire Plan and is
tantamount to spending considerable sums to search for the proverbial
horse after it has left the barn, rather than spending less to ensure
the barn door was closed and locked in the first place.
In fact, the Agency continues to tout its ``98% initial attack
rate'' in its congressional testimony. Despite this testimony, no data
can be found to support their claim. Quite candidly, a 98% IA rate is
likely unattainable if proper preparedness resources are not in place.
The best our firefighters can conclude from the data available is that
the IA rate is closer to 88% or lower.
The result of the diversion of fire preparedness funding was felt
all over the West during the '06 season and had an enormous impact on
the Agency's expenditure of $1.5 billion on suppression this past
season.
On many forests, engine companies were available for response only
5 out of 7 days and with 3 instead of 5 personnel because preparedness
resources were not funded and thus unavailable. In fact, early in the
season, some engines were completely unmanned and several Hotshot crews
were unavailable due to staffing. Fuels funding was also diverted
resulting in less fuel reduction capability. As the season progressed,
small fires that would have been kept small had preparedness resources
been available needlessly grew in size, intensity and obviously cost.
Another victim of the diversion of funds is the failure of the
Agency to staff at 100% of the Most Efficient Level (MEL) developed as
a result of the National Fire Plan. Given the inherent cost-
effectiveness of our federal wildland firefighters, it makes no fiscal
sense not to be properly prepared by staffing at the Most Efficient
Level. The failure of the Agency to fund preparedness resources because
of the diversion of such funds has forests now staffing at ``a
percentage of MEL.'' Obviously, anything less than 100% is not the most
efficient level of staffing and thus provides less preparedness
protection and increases the risk to the health & safety of
firefighters and others.
Often throughout the season, orders for federal resources went
unfilled. In fact, traditional ``unable to fill'' lists received from
various Geographic Coordination Centers (GACCs) which usually are
several lines long, were now several pages long. Individual forests,
recognizing the fact that federal resources were not available as they
should have been, remained in their home forest knowing that if they
left to help out in other areas, there would be no resources to cover
their forest.
Two options existed. Either wait out the arrival of federal
resources from considerable distances away, (again allowing the fire to
grow in size, intensity & cost) or implement what has come to be a far
too familiar practice of calling in non-fire resources (municipal &
State fire agencies along with contractors) which obviously
significantly increased the cost of any given fire.
It is our opinion that if preparedness funds had not been diverted
and such funds had gotten to the FMOs who needed them as we believe
Congress intended, then the number of acres burned as well as
suppression costs would have been significantly reduced as fires would
have been kept small and federal resources would have been available so
as not to have to ``over'' rely on significantly higher-priced non-
federal resources.
Policy Makers With Little to no Fire Experience
Congress should be keenly aware that those in the hierarchy of the
Agency such as Undersecretary Rey, the Forest Service Chief, Regional
Foresters, District Rangers and Forest Supervisors, and who have the
power of developing and implementing fire program policies that affect
our firefighters are woefully inexperienced in fire and possess few
fire qualifications which would allow them to develop and implement
fire program policies with firefighting and firefighters in mind. We
firmly believe that Congress needs to look at the make up of those in
the bureaucracy making such policy and seek to ensure those in policy-
making positions have sufficient fire background.
Recommendations & Solutions
The recommendations & solutions the federal wildland firefighting
community offers will help correct the out-of-control suppression costs
of wildfires by amending Agency policy, strengthening our Nation's
wildland firefighting infrastructure and ultimately saving our Nation's
taxpayers considerable sums each year. They are simple, fundamental
solutions to complex problems requiring a change in mind-set by the
Agencies with regards to how they manage their fire programs.
1. Ensure Fire Preparedness funds get to the field and are
not diverted or used for any other purpose
Common sense dictates that providing our Nation's inherently less
costly federal wildland firefighters with the resources necessary to be
proactive rather than reactive will provide them the best opportunity
to keep fires small, more manageable and less costly. Given that
Congress adopted the National Fire Plan that comes to the same
conclusions should provide Congress with the incentive to ensure that
such preparedness funding be spent on preparedness resources, not vague
and nebulous peripheral sources that preclude our firefighters from
being properly prepared.
2. Ensure the Agency's budget request outlines all
financial needs to fund all of its various projects
To avoid future pitfalls of fund transfers, the Chief of the Forest
Service should be compelled to provide the Administration and Congress
with the full cost of funding all projects required by Congress. Should
such funds not be authorized and appropriated by Congress, it should be
Congress itself who decides which programs are ``underfunded.''
3. Replace archaic pay & personnel policies with ``21st
Century'' policies that will significantly reduce
if not entirely eliminate recruitment & retention
problems & ultimately save taxpayers significant
sums
A number of legislative proposals have been introduced recently in
Congress to help strengthen the ever-weakening infrastructure of our
Nation's federal wildland fire fighting forces. These federal
firefighters are inherently less expensive than their municipal & state
counterparts as well as most contract firefighting resources.
Each year, significant taxpayer dollars are spent hiring & training
federal wildland firefighters only to see them leave for better pay &
benefits. If retention replaced recruitment as a priority, millions
could be saved in training & hundreds of thousands of dollars in staff
hours for recruitment & hiring. Additionally, making such employment
attractive in the first place would allow recruitment to take care of
itself.
As an example, if the Forest Service continues to hire & train 496
apprentices in Region 5 @ $14,000 per student just to retain 198
employees, the Forest Service would continue to lose $4,200,000 each
year. We believe it more cost efficient and effective to invest those
sums in salary and other retention tools rather than to continue to
train 3-4 people to permanently fill one vacancy.
Such tools include but are not limited to:
Provide portal to portal compensation for firefighters while
on emergency incidents exceeding 24 hours (refer to H.R. 408,
The Federal Wildland Firefighter Emergency Response
Compensation Act from the 109th Congress), the cost of which
would likely be less than $10 million annually . . . less if
preparedness resources are fully funded.
Proper wildland firefighter classification (refer to H.R.
5697, The Federal Wildland Firefighter Classification Act, also
from the 109th Congress and passed by the House of
Representatives.
Provide for hazard duty pay for prescribed wildfire burns.
Provide eligibility to the Federal Employee Group Life
Insurance (FEGLI) for our Nation's temporary wildland
firefighters.
Provide basic health coverage to Temporary wildland
firefighters.
Permit time served as a temporary firefighter to be
creditable towards retirement.
Return the hiring process of firefighters back to the
Forests.
Although these recommendations may sound expensive, they are far
less costly than maintaining the ineffective and inefficient ``status
quo'' and actually represent a fraction of the average annual fire
suppression budget. Adopting these recommendations strengthens the
infrastructure of our land-management agency fire forces and thereby
reduces the need to continue to be reliant on higher-priced non-federal
resources. Such recommendations will stem the tide of losses and ensure
the investment our taxpayers make in hiring and training these
firefighters is not wasted.
These recommendations can be paid for with existing fire program
funding at current levels without compromising the program itself. It
simply will literally take an act of Congress to get the land-
management agencies to change the way they do business in.
CONCLUSION
We understand that our opinions and recommendations are a departure
from what Congress normally hears from the bureaucracy. It should be
clear to Congress however that our federal wildland firefighters have a
vested interest in proper management, fiscal and otherwise, of the fire
programs of our land management agencies. Clearly, we believe our
Nation's federal wildland firefighters to be the true experts in this
field and ask Congress for its consideration.
COMMENTS ON PL 107-203
We were pleased and honored to have Senator Domenici raise the
issue of firefighter liability as it relates to PL 107-203. With
current criminal prosecution of a fire crew boss continuing in
Washington State and genuine concerns among federal wildland and other
firefighters in taking such assignments or retaining certain
qualifications, it is imperative that the law be revisited to better
understand Congress' intent in passing the legislation and to clearly
define the parameters of any USDA OIG investigation and ultimately, to
remove this cloud of potential criminal liability that has become an
unfair advantage to our federal wildland firefighters.
Additionally, if the Federal Government insists on carrying such a
law on the books that places an unfair burden and disadvantage upon
federal wildland firefighters as compared to other federal, state &
local firefighters, it, the federal Government, should pay for the
entire cost of Personal Liability Insurance (PLI).
Furthermore, we believe the use of laws passed subsequently to 9/11
with respect to charges & prosecution of those responsible for the
death of ``federal officials'' is, in the context of their use by the
U.S. Attorney in Spokane Washington against a fire crew boss, to be a
gross abuse of the intent and application of such law(s). In the
interest of judicial fairness, we believe it should be incumbent upon
the U.S. Attorney General to instruct U.S. Attorney James McDevitt that
the application of this law in the matter being played out in
Washington State is at the very least, a stretch within the meaning and
intent of the law and more likely an abuse of the use of said law.
The seriousness of this issue and its national repercussions
deserve a separate and distinct hearing on this matter. It should also
be noted that while we are pleased by the concerns raised by Mr. Rey
and the recommendations he suggested the Administration would support
on the issue, the FWFSA offered those same concerns and recommendations
to the Agency over 2\1/2\ years ago which, at the time, fell on deaf
ears. The Agency's new position on this issue is clearly in response to
the overwhelming voice of its firefighters on this issue.
On behalf of our Nation's federal wildland firefighters, thank you
for the opportunity to submit this statement for the record. We would
be happy to assist the Committee and the agencies with any efforts to
rectify the current problems facing our firefighters and the fire
programs of the land management agencies.
______
Statement of Gerald ``Jerry'' Winkle, Chairman, Valley County Board of
County Commissioners, Valley County, ID
Dear Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources:
The Valley County Board of County Commissioner's (Board) submits
for consideration the following statement regarding wildfires on
National Forest Lands, efforts to contain the initial costs of wildfire
suppression activities and the costs that go beyond the initial
suppression, and the impacts of wildfire use fires (WFU).
As you consider the costs of wildfire suppression, please, analyze
the negative economic impacts to forest counties, and the negative
influence of other federal actions and their cumulative effects on
local governments. Forest counties deserve a system that works for
them, not against them: a system that protects and improves their
health, safety, environment, and well-being and improves the
performance of the economy without imposing unacceptable or
unreasonable costs on forest county taxpayers.
The Board recognizes that there are direct and indirect costs
associated with wildfire. The Board also recognizes that historic use
of fire to maintain forests was acceptable. We are now out of our
historic range of variability. The forestland have unhealthy buildup of
fuels in the national forests and the County must look to the
cumulative effects of wild fire use, prescribed burns, and excessive
slash burning on the overall environment. This buildup of biomass in
the County's national forests has several consequences, including an
increased risk of catastrophic wildfires, diminished wildlife habitat,
decreased water production from forested watersheds, degraded water
quality, and certainly hampers biodiversity.
By making modest changes in federal forestry practices the
forestlands can be used much more efficiently to remove carbon dioxide
from the atmosphere. This not only cleans the atmosphere but also
increases organic matter in the soil where it is beneficial. The Board
recognizes that the problems and effects of air pollution cross-
political boundaries and they are frequently inter and intra
jurisdictional in nature. The Board encourages coordination and
cooperation between the federal, states, regional, tribal, local units
of government, public and private organizations, and concerned
individuals.
It is the responsibility of the Board to protect the public
welfare, to protect scenic, aesthetic, historic, and cultural values,
and to prevent air pollution problems that interfere with the enjoyment
of life, health, property, or natural attractions within Valley County.
It is the intention of the Board to prevent any areas of Valley
County from reaching air contaminant levels that are not protective of
human health and the environment, even if the cause is smoke from
wildfires. The Board realizes that given the gross imbalance in private
ownership and federally administered lands within Valley County that
some federal policies and events have a higher contribution level to
air pollution and may affect other environmental media.
RATIONAL
The 2006 fierce wildfires will lead to even fiercer political
battles over who is responsible for the fires, and rightfully so. Is it
the hazardous fuel? Is it the drought? Is it a National policy that
does not support quick response? Or is it the National Wild Fire Use
Policy?
The answer turns out to be ``all of the above;'' It is not our
local Forest Service and it certainly isn't the brave men and women who
stand on the fire line. The hazardous fuel crisis is not a myth;
drought and fuel, is the chief culprit behind big fires in Idaho and
elsewhere in the West.
It is estimated that over 900,000 acres burned in Idaho this fire
season, contributing on a national level, to this year's record setting
wildfires of nearly 9 million acres. In some cases, quick response
would have helped minimize the size, the negative ecological and
economic effects of the wildland fires.
Fire is a natural and vital component of most forest ecosystems.
Wildland fires become a problem when they burn hotter than normally
occurring wildland fires and/or on areas larger than normal. These
hotter and bigger fires are now more prevalent following a century of
human activities that have changed the ecological character of forest
ecosystems around the country. These large-scale, high-intensity fires
can have negative effects on forest ecosystems and local communities.
The State of Idaho and Valley County are committed to helping
communities deal with catastrophic wildland fires through education
programs and funding that supports forest health restoration and post
fire recovery for communities. Wildland fires cause several problems,
including: soil erosion, landslides, water pollution, decreased (and
sometimes dangerous) air quality, threats to human safety and
structures, and loss of resources or access to resources, such as
timber for logging and trails and waterways for recreation.
The number of firefighters killed each year more than doubled from
about 8 per year in the 1950s to nearly 17 per year in the 1990s. Where
fatalities increased was in aircraft and vehicle accidents growing from
1 to 6 per year and heart attacks growing from one-half to 5 per year.
An aging workforce and greater use of aircraft and vehicles, and the
lack of clean air, are responsible for increased firefighter deaths.
This year in Valley County four (4) young souls were lost in a WFU
helicopter crash.
AIR AND WATER QUALITY
September 8, 2006 The Idaho Statesman's headlines read `` Air
quality was 2nd worst in U.S. Thursday''.
``DEQ says Boise's dubious distinction is temporary. Expert
says healthy adults face little long-term risk. Another day of
stagnant weather and raging wildfires Thursday kept the
Treasure Valley gripped in dingy pollutant-laden air, forcing
the Department of Environmental Quality to issue its second
consecutive red alert--its third in less than one month. Boise
was second only to Sacramento, Calif., for having the worst air
quality in the country''.
The culprit, forest fires. The EPA has warned that it's important
to limit your exposure to smoke--especially if you may be susceptible.
Wildfire is one of the most destructive natural forces known to
mankind.
Ecological problems continue once fires have stopped burning. Soil
that was held in place by trees and other vegetation is likely to wash
away into waterways during rainstorms or with next year's runoff. This
surge of soil and ash into waterways can harm fish and other aquatic
species of plants and animals as well as drinking water supplies.
Scientists are also studying the link between forest fires and
mercury in fish as part of a U.S. Forest Service fisheries research
team tasks. The mercury locked up in the forest can build up for years
in trees and plants and then suddenly be flushed into nearby waterways
when it's released by forest fires that turn the vegetation to ash.
Scientists with the Forest Service and other agencies are trying
now to determine how much mercury is released by those fires. They're
also finding interesting relationships between mercury on the land and
mercury in the fish.
While the data is preliminary, scientists already have made some
observations from their two summers in the field. As expected, they
found that mercury in fish is related to mercury levels in nearby
soils. They also found that the more organic matter is in the soil, the
more mercury it holds. Scientists also have used soil samples to prove
that the mercury in the forest is coming from the sky, not from the
bedrock below.
Past experience has shown us that a quick response can help
minimize the negative ecological and economic effects of wildland
fires, including loss of jobs, soil erosion and water pollution.
Techniques such as soil stabilization and replanting can dramatically
reduce soil erosion and water pollution, and also can provide jobs lost
during the fires.
A coalition of the Forest Service, University of Minnesota and the
U.S. Geological Survey are studing fish from 10 Superior National
Forest lakes before and after fires. While the data is preliminary,
scientists already have made some observations from their two summers
in the field. As expected, they found that mercury in fish is related
to mercury levels in nearby soils. They also found that the more
organic matter is in the soil, the more mercury it holds. Scientists
also have used soil samples to prove that the mercury in the forest is
coming from the sky, not from the bedrock below.
Trent Wickman, air resources specialist for the Superior National
Forest has stated that there's no doubt this is airborne deposition.
It's not coming from the rock. Scientists also have found a surprising
relationship between lake size and mercury. The smaller the lake, the
higher the mercury level in the fish. They are not exactly sure why but
it's a pretty dramatic correlation so far.
At the very least, the experiments could change the way scientists
think about mercury pollution. Hans Friedli, an atmospheric research
center chemist has estimated that as much as 800 tons of mercury may
enter the atmosphere annually from burning vegetation worldwide--
ranging from wildfires to farmers clearing underbrush.
When atmospheric mercury falls to the ground in liquid form, it is
absorbed by leaves and needles, where it stays, at least until fires
send it wafting into the air again. Adding thousands of fires worldwide
to the mix of mercury sources potentially complicates scientific models
for tracking the pollutant. Peter Hobbs, a professor of atmospheric
science at the University of Washington noted hat if you've got
multiple sources from fires, you've obviously got a lot more
complicated situation.
Burning vegetation and trees contribute to the release of carbon
dioxide into the atmosphere directly through emissions of gases and
aerosols from the fires and indirectly through the impact that fire
activity has on the forest ecosystem and its ability to store carbon.
Simply put, fires contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and there are
impacts from fires, when they destroy trees, which soak up carbon
dioxide. Federal Land Managers should be involved in long-term timber
production and horticulture and utilizing incentives that are being
introduced globally through the implementation of carbon credit
commerce.
INVASIVE WEEDS
Burned areas can contain high nutrient levels, exposed ground
surfaces and reduced shade. These favor weed colonization and
exponential weed growth, which can prevent reestablishment of desired
vegetation and displace already established native plants. If permitted
to reach large infestation levels, the resulting weed population will
be very difficult and expensive to manage. Weeds are destroying the
very habitat that many endangered species rely on. Preventing weeds
from spreading through seed dispersal is the most effective and least
costly method of weed management. Monies are needed to help fund forest
counties weed program. Surveying burned areas to eradicate new weeds is
essential after wildfires to prevent weed establishment. Monitoring
should occur at least three times (spring, summer, fall) and
concentrate where weed infestations often begin: along fire lines,
roadways, railways and waterways. This is all expensive and the Forest
Service must carry the burden of the cost of weed eradication that is
expanded because of wildfire whether it's a suppression fires or WFU
fires. Currently, there is no federal funding for restoration and weed
eradication for WFU fires. Somehow, WFU is defined as a beneficial use
and does not take into consideration either short-tern or long-term
negative affect of WFU.
The weed problem has grabbed the attention of elk and deer hunting
organizations, ranchers who graze their livestock on public land,
foresters, equestrian groups, homeowners, scientists (there are even
scientists who specialize in weed research), as well as the highest
levels of the land management agencies entrusted with the care of
public lands.
FEDERAL COMMITMENTS
It is impossible for local governments to cover the cost of
wildfire suppression, especially in forest counties with gross
imbalance in private ownership and federally administered lands.
Generally, state or local governments may not tax federally
administered lands unless they are authorized to do so by Congress.
Since local governments are often financed by property or sales taxes,
this inability to tax the property values or products derived from the
federally administered lands may affect local tax bases significantly.
Instead of authorizing taxation, historically, Congress has chosen to
create various payment programs designed to make up for lost tax
revenue. For forest counties the most wide-ranging payment program is
called ``Payments in Lieu of Taxes'' or PILT, which has not been fully
funded in decades.
Recently, federal land managers are faced with an ever-present
funding shortage; and forest counties across the nation are faced with
higher property taxes if the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self
Determination Act, Public Law 106-393, is not re-authorized and
appropriated. The National Forest System was formed in 1905 from the
Forest Reserves, which were established between 1891 and in 1905 by
presidential proclamation. Many counties found 65 to 90 percent of the
lands were sequestered into the new forest reserves, leaving little
land for economic development and diminishing the potential tax base to
support essential community infrastructure such as roads and schools.
If Public Law 106-393 is reauthorized as requested this will almost
certainly be the last time and we need a long-term solution. This
demonstrates a much larger problem, which is funding and the impact of
National Forest System Lands on local communities and local government.
ECONOMICS
Simply put, the county's tax base, or more specifically the lack
thereof, is inadequate to support the services required for such an
expansive county. I think it's important to note, the county's citizens
and taxpayers are supporting those who recreate in the area by
maintaining roads, law enforcement, search and rescue, medical aid and
other services, infrastructure and facilities.
If the state and local governments are being considered as
financial partners in fire suppression then we need to speak to the
real need. Valley County is overwhelmingly made up of public land,
while carefully constructing language regarding fire suppression in the
wildland urban interface there could be language that would provide
significant new wilderness protection for the most sensitive areas and
a new management regime that provides for economic growth for non-
special designated National Forest System Lands, while settling a
decades old debate on management of the public land. Like Valley County
there is a grossly disproportionate public ownership, which causes a
severe strain on resources.
Forest counties need a long-term solution that would stabilize the
federally committed payments, which help support roads and schools, and
to provide projects that enhance forest ecosystem health and provide
employment opportunities, and to improve cooperative relationships
among those who use and care about the lands that the agencies manage.
A long-term solution like this might prove to be appropriate for
the Twenty-five Percent Fund pursuant to 16 U.S.C. Section 500 and
stabilize payments to Idaho's forest counties, which help support roads
and schools. This is a discussion that must take place prior to the
discussion on wildfire suppression and who is going pay.
The Board can appreciate the Government Accountability Office (GAO)
examination of the issues surrounding cost sharing among Federal,
State, and local entities. The Board recognizes the need to negotiate
cost-sharing methods that will take into account the multitude of
factors that occur in each incident. Last year the Board worked closely
with all jurisdictions during an unparalleled fire season. Valley
County declared a disaster because of wildfires, which strained county
and state budgets. This would be the same for most forest counties and
they need help funding the wildfire induced, additional local law
enforcement patrols, and sentries to man road closures, evacuations,
and road & bridge maintenance and restoration.
The Board understands that the Secretaries have already begun
crafting an interagency template to assist in addressing a number of
cost sharing issues. As the departments continue to develop guidance to
be used in negotiating cost share agreements among the Federal
government and their various non-Federal partners. Any such template
should not be construed to interfere with treaties and any other
obligations to the Tribes financial and nonfinancial commitments to
county governments (i.e. PILT and 25% Fund), and this language should
clearly be part of any template.
In conclusion, Wildfire is one of the most destructive natural
forces known to mankind. There is no way that a local government can
sustain the negative effects of wildfire on our NOW recreation-oriented
communities. Air quality is destroyed; there is physical danger and
services are limited.
To mitigate the cumulative effects of wildfire Congress should
firmly encourage timely action to repair damaged forests and to reduce
recovery costs. In line with that encouragement the Board also believes
that now is the time to consider the effective control of forest fires,
and the policy of WFU in the fight against global warming.
Congress should appropriate full funding for existing commitments
(PILT, & 25% Funds, either by reauthorization of Public Law 106-393,
such as Senate Bill 380 or through traditional methods) to forest
counties and fund forest county sheriff patrols, sentries to man road
closures, evacuations, road & bridge maintenance and restoration, along
with weed monitoring and eradication, which resulted from WFU fires and
suppression fires. More atmospheric studies need to be funded such a
global warming influence from worldwide wildfires and burning, some
statistics and projects on carbon and mercury affects on the human
environment, and air and water quality in general. Then we can discuss
the cost of wildfire suppression.
The Committee's kind consideration of the Board's concerns will be
greatly appreciated.
______
National Association of Forest Service Retirees,
January 25, 2007, Lincoln, CA.
Hon. Jeff Bingaman,
Chairman, Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, U.S. Senate,
Dirkson Office Building, Washington, DC.
Re: Hearing on Costs of Wildfire Suppression, January 30, 2007
Dear Mr. Chairman: The National Association of Forest Service
Retirees is an organization of people who devoted their careers to
protecting and caring for the Nation's forest resources, particularly
the resources of the National Forest System. We continue our interest
and support for the statutory missions of the Forest Service. This
letter is to let you know of our concern about the impact that the
present system of funding wildfire suppression is having on other
Forest Service programs.
Background on the funding of wildfire suppression on the National
Forests is set forth in the enclosed issue paper entitled, Funding
Midland Firefighting. As noted in this issue paper, the budget for
wildland fire suppression increased from 25 percent of the agency's
budget in FY2000 to 44 percent of the budget in FY2006. As the ten-year
average of fire suppression costs continue to rise the proportion of
the Forest Service budget devoted to fire suppression will continue to
increase. This shift of the available Forest Service budget to fire
suppression is coming at the expense of other Forest Service programs,
not only for management of the National Forest System, but also for
Research and State and Private Forestry as well. The costs of
suppressing major fires must be taken out of the Forest Service budget
if other programs essential to the protection and care of our Nation's
forest resources are to remain viable. Perhaps, funding for
catastrophic wildfires should be through disaster funds such as those
administered by FEMA.
Please include the issue paper in the hearing record. We ask that
your committee take action to revise the method of funding wildland
fire suppression on the National Forests so that responsible management
of the natural resources of these precious lands can be maintained. We
would be pleased to answer any questions or to provide any further
information the committee may desire.
Sincerely:
George Leonard,
Chair, Board of Directors.
[Enclosure.]
Funding Wildland Firefighting *
Throughout the fire season in recent years, the evening TV news
regularly features stories of wildland fires. The stories tell of
threatened homes and communities, evacuations, and feature pictures of
homes and blackened forests that have been destroyed. It is not
surprising then to learn that wildland firefighting costs are rising.
What people do not recognize is that these rising costs are eroding
other Forest Service programs--such as maintenance and operation of
public campgrounds, keeping hiking and ski trails open, improving
habitat for fish and wildlife, completing high priority community
forest health projects, completing high priority research, and
providing urgently needed assistance to States. It is vital that the
Administration and the Congress address the issue of fire funding to
avoid jeopardizing these essential Forest Service activities.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Note: The source of data included in this paper is the U.S.
Forest Service.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
SOME HISTORY
For most of the post WWII period, the Congress authorized the
Forest Service to borrow from any available funds to cover the cost of
fighting wildfires. The money borrowed would be reimbursed through
supplemental appropriations. The Forest Service had substantial funds
deposited by timber purchasers to cover the cost of reforestation,
timber stand improvement, and slash disposal on cutover areas. These
funds were large enough to permit the borrowing for fire suppression
without disrupting on-going activities. When the timber sale program
was significantly reduced in the 1990's, the deposited funds became
inadequate to cover rising costs of fire fighting. The agency was
forced to borrow program funds from current year's appropriations
resulting in serious disruption of on-going activities.
In order to minimize the disruption of current programs and the
need for supplemental appropriations, the Congress began adding funds
for fire suppression to the Forest Service budget. The amount budgeted
for suppression each year is equal to the rolling 10-year average cost
of fire suppression. (See chart below.)
F.S. SUPPRESSION
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Obligations 10-yr.
Year $000 avg.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1997............................................ 180,183 301,475
1998............................................ 245,964 327,036
1999............................................ 411,546 369,206
2000............................................ 1,097,862 478,993
2001............................................ 689,550 526,184
2002............................................ 1,267,429 607,787
2003............................................ 1,023,000 680,493
2004............................................ 726,000 649,956
2005............................................ 660,987 683,878
2006 \1\........................................ 1,300,000 768,595
2007............................................ ............ 836,874
2008............................................ ............ 907,157
------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ FY2006 obligations are estimate.
THE PROBLEM!
This budget decision has had serious consequences for the Forest
Service budget. In FY 2000 total funds appropriated for fire amounted
to 25 percent of the agency budget. In FY 2006 total funding for fire
has increased to 41 percent of the budget. It is projected to take 44
percent of the budget in 2008. An overall budget increase in 2001,
following the high cost of fire suppression in 2000, did minimize the
impact of rising fire costs on other programs. Since then however
constrained budget levels have resulted in an erosion of agency
programs as the 10-year average cost of fire suppression has continued
to rise.
From FY2001 (the first year of the National Fire Plan) to 2006,
funding for non-fire Forest Service programs has declined by nine
percent, when adjusted for inflation. As noted in the table above, the
projected 10-year average fire suppression costs are raising more than
$50 million per year. The costs will increase even faster as the easy
fire seasons of the late 90's are dropped and the recent high cost
years are added to the calculation of the 10-year average. Assuming
continued constraints on discretionary domestic spending, the current
method of funding fire fighting costs will cannibalize all other Forest
Service programs essential to the well-being of our Nation's forests.
FIRE FIGHTING COSTS MUST BE OFF-BUDGET
It is essential that the Administration and the Congress take the
costs of fire suppression out of the Forest Service's constrained
budget for Research, State and Private Forestry, and the stewardship of
our National Forests and Grasslands.
______
Statement of Michael E. Dubrasich, Lebanon, OR
SUMMARY
My name is Michael E. Dubrasich. I reside in Lebanon, Oregon. I am
a professional consulting forester with 26 years experience in private
practice, and am knowledgeable about and have professional expertise in
fire cost accounting.
Last fire season was the worst in over fifty years. Nearly
10,000,000 acres burned in wildfires with suppression costs approaching
$1.85 billion. The 2006 fire season was the third record-setter in six
years. Seven of the worst ten fire seasons since the 1950's have
occurred in the last 11 years.
In light of our growing crisis of mega forest fires, it is
appropriate for the U.S. Senate to examine the associated costs. Your
efforts to uncover root causes and effective solutions are consistent
with your responsibilities, and are deeply appreciated by this citizen.
As an American forester, I wish to aid you in you efforts to save our
American forests from catastrophic incineration and to reduce
burgeoning Federal fire suppression expenditures.
Therefore it is incumbent on me to point out to you that the USDA
OIG Audit Report: Forest Service Large Fire Suppression Costs (Report
No. 08601-44-SF) is seriously flawed and fiducially incompetent. The
methodology and conclusions of the Audit are inconsistent with the
accepted standards and fundamentals of fire cost accounting. As a
result, the recommendations in the Audit are horrifically bad, and
implementation will increase (catastrophically) fire acreage and fire
suppression costs.
The Audit fails in three important ways:
1) The Audit fails to consider total costs per fire, and
instead focuses analysis on fire suppression costs per acre.
2) The Audit fails to consider economic cost-plus-loss.
3) The Audit fails to consider the economic utility of fire
suppression.
The errors and omissions of the Audit extend to its
recommendations, which are tremendously counter-productive. If applied,
the recommendations in the Audit will increase fire acreage and costs
exponentially, and could initiate a region-wide firestorm that will be
an unprecedented national disaster.
Proper analysis of fire suppression costs, using the standards and
fundamentals developed over many decades of econometric study and
practice world-wide, would lead to much different conclusions and
recommendations. Qualified and fiducially competent analysis would lead
to rational recommendations that could save billions of dollars,
millions of acres, thousands of homes, and dozens of lives every year.
Therefore it is necessary that you revisit this issue. You can save
America from expanding fire seasons, exploding suppression costs, and
the horrors of forest holocausts, but only if you examine the issue
with the appropriate analytical tools. To continue on the present
course, based on the improper Audit, will result in major national
disasters that are otherwise completely preventable.
the three flaws in the audit
The three fundamental fire cost accounting flaws in the Audit are
technical, and require further explanation.
Total costs per fire--The Audit focuses analysis on fire
suppression costs per acre, not total costs per fire. This is illogical
and incompetent in the accounting sense.. Total costs, not costs per
acre, are the problem. A small fire may be expensive to suppress per
acre, and megafire suppression costs may be much less per acre, but
overall megafires cost magnitudes more money from taxpayers and the
Federal Treasury.
For example, the Warm Fire of 2006 (North Kaibab District, Kaibab
National Forest), could have been suppressed when it was one acre in
size at a cost of approximately $5,000. If that had happened,
suppression costs would have been $5,000 per acre. Instead, the Warm
Fire was allowed to burn as a Wildland Fire Use fire (WFU). It
eventually reached nearly 60,000 acres in size and cost over $7 million
to suppress. This works out to a little over $100 per acre.
According to the defective logic of the Audit, the $7 million
dollar price tag was preferable to the $5,000 price tag because of much
reduced costs per acre. Yet the preferred option proved to cost an
additional $6,995,000 total!
You don't need to be a CPA to see the irrationality in the Audit's
approach.
Cost-plus-loss--Almost since the founding of the U.S. Forest
Service in 1905, analysts have evaluated fire costs as suppression
expenses plus the capital value of the resources destroyed. The cost of
firefighting plus the lost value of whatever burned down is known as
cost-plus-loss and is the standard parameter of forest fire cost
accounting.
During the last two decades, the U.S. Forest Service and
other federal fire management agencies have focused on planning
approaches that combined variants of the 90-year-old paradigm
of cost-plus-loss minimization on simple deterministic models
of initial attack on wildland fires (Donovan et al. 1999,
Lungren 1999).--From Fried, Gilless, and Spero. 2006. Analyzing
initial attack on wildland fires using stochastic simulation.
International Journal of Wildland Fire, 2006, 15, 137-146.
Federal fire suppression expenses were nearly $2 billion in 2006,
but I estimate losses at 48 billion board feet of merchantable timber
with an economic value of $24 billion. Therefore total federal forest
fire cost-plus-loss was approximately $26 billion in 2006 alone.
(Sidenote: For comparative purposes, the entire 2006 timber harvest in
Oregon, the largest timber-producing state, was 4 billion board feet,
or one-twelfth of the timber destroyed by fire nationally in the same
year.)
That valuation does not account for the loss of habitat, wildlife,
watershed, and esthetic values. In many locations the U.S. Congress has
deemed that those non-commodity values exceed the timber values.
Therefore the 2006 losses in non-commodities exceeded $24 billion,
because those forests that were catastrophically incinerated also
suffered huge degradation of habitat, wildlife populations, water
quality and quantity, and attractiveness for recreation.
Nor does that valuation include the losses incurred on private
property in the form of tree farms, ranches, rural homes, and other
rural private property destroyed by federal fires emanating from
federal lands.
Nor does that valuation include the lives of 20 forest firefighters
lost in the line of duty last year.
Thus the $26 billion cost-plus-loss figure underestimates the true
losses, which were priceless and irreplaceable.
Using the Warm Fire example, approximately 17,300 acres experienced
the loss, on average, of $2,400 per acre in timber value. That
represents a total loss of $41.5 million. Added to the $7 million in
fire suppression expenses, the total cost-plus-loss of the Warm Fire
was close to $50 million. That does not include the irreplaceable loss
of a heritage old-growth ponderosa pine forest and the habitat it
provided to rare and protected species such as the Kaibab squirrel.
The Audit totally ignores cost-plus-loss and thus fails to provide
the critical information that Congress and federal forest agencies need
to evaluate true fire costs.
Utility--For the last fifty years, or more, fire cost analysis has
focused on calculations of the economic utility of fire suppression.
Particularly significant are the contributions of: Bratten
(1970) on the use of nonlinear mathematical programming utility
maximization models under constrained resource availability; .
. . (Ibid).
We fight fire to prevent fire from destroying valuable resources.
The prevention of destruction is what is useful about firefighting. In
every fire there is some potential destruction that could happen, so we
seek to prevent it by controlling and extinguishing the fire.
The potential destruction can be accounted for as probable cost-
plus-loss should firefighting fail to stop the fire. That is, should
the fire not be contained within a given perimeter, how much bigger
could it get and how much additional firefighting expenses and resource
destruction would likely occur?
The mathematical calculation of probable cost-plus-loss (if
suppression had failed) minus the actual cost-plus-loss (assuming
suppression was successful) represents the economic utility of
firefighting.
In short, the dollar usefulness of firefighting is the value of
what was saved (plus probable expenses) minus the total sum value of
what was lost plus actual expenses. The result of that computation is
called the economic utility of firefighting. The general goal of
firefighting expenditures is to maximize the utility.
No rational discussion of fire suppression costs can happen without
reference to the economic utility of firefighting. Maximizing utility
is the only rational reason we spend any money on firefighting at all.
Using the Warm Fire example, the fire could have been extinguished
at one acre for a cost-plus-loss of $5,000 + $2,400 = $7,400. Instead
the agency chose to let it burn for an eventual cost-plus-loss of $48.5
million. The difference between these two figures is $48,492,600. In
other words, the decision to Let It Burn had a negative utility of
$48,492,600!
The Audit completely ignores utility. It is a very dangerous
omission. The logic of the Audit is fiducially incompetent and wrong,
and following it will lead to steadily increasing catastrophic forest
fire acreage and exponentially greater cost-plus-losses in the future.
THE HORRENDOUSLY BAD RECOMMENDATIONS IN THE AUDIT
The Audit methodology and logic is flawed. So too are the
recommendations, which will increase, not decrease, fire acreage and
fire costs.
1. The Audit calls for sanctions and penalties against fire
managers who ``overspend'' on a cost per acre basis. The Audit goes so
far as to call for a national investigation of a USFS Forest Supervisor
who, the Audit alleges, ran up costs of a fire to $3,000 per acre. Yet
there is no analysis of the value of the resources, homes, communities,
and lives saved by the actions of that Forest Supervisor.
In another case, a regional cost-containment review was
conducted on a wildfire with total suppression costs of about
$9 million. The fire's wildland fire situation analysis (WFSA)
estimated suppression costs of $200 per acre. According to the
regional review, the fire brought a significant amount of
political pressure on the forest supervisor and the incident
commander to suppress the fire as quickly as possible due to
the presence of State timber, giant sequoias, and the perceived
threat to a number of small communities. In response to this
pressure, the regional forester issued a letter emphasizing the
need to throw ``everything but the kitchen sink'' at the fire.
Accordingly, the fire was fought with much more intense tactics
that involved larger and more aggressive use of suppression
resources. As a result, FS spent about $3,000 per acre to
contain it, or about 15 times the per acre cost estimated in
the WFSA.
The regional team reviewed the IMT's decisions and concluded
that the high costs ``were justified.'' The team did not,
however, explain how or why the costs were justified, or
address the effectiveness of the team's tactics. Further, since
the regional forester's involvement in this incident impacted
the team's objectivity, a national review should have been
conducted. However, we found no evidence that it was.--From
USDA/OIG-A108601-44-SF, page 31.
The positive economic utility of the Forest Supervisor's decision-
making was in the billions of dollars. The authors of the Audit wish to
see him investigated and sanctioned for that, and to send that message
to all fire managers in the future. Fire managers are being told that
their efforts to reduce total fire cost, cost-plus-lost, and potential
cost-plus-loss will not be tolerated and punishments will ensue.
Instead, fire managers are to let fires grow as large as possible to
minimize costs per acre of fire suppression.
That policy will lead directly to larger fires, increased total
fire suppression expenses, and increased resource losses. That is the
opposite of what Congress and the Nation desire. At the root of that
irrational policy are the fiducially incompetent methods of the Audit.
2. The Audit calls for an increase in Wildland Fire Use fires
(WFU's), yet WFU's have large negative utility. A WFU is a wildfire
started by lightning, in an accidental spot, on an accidental day,
usually in the middle of fire season. In every single case, the choice
made to let a WFU burn has resulted in inflated fire suppression costs
and extensive resource losses.
The Audit claims that WFU's have resource benefits, but they do
not. WFU's do not reduce the fire hazard; they actualize it, which
often results in more dead fuels than were on the site before the fire.
WFU's do not select which trees to kill, but kill old-growth and young-
growth trees indiscriminately. Beetle-caused mortality often follows
WFU's, killing the few trees that survive the fires. Wildlife habitat
for forest dwelling animals is often destroyed or severely damaged
beyond recovery by WFU's.
WFU is a new name for an old practice formerly called prescribed
natural fire. It was a prescribed natural fire that burned over a
million acres in Yellowstone, our flagship national park, in 1988. Let
It Burn policies led to the Biscuit Fire of 2003 and the Tripod Fire of
2006, among many others. Both were de facto WFU's that blew up. Both
megafires destroyed vast tracts of forests containing T&E species
populations and habitat.
The Warm Fire of 2006 started out as a declared WFU, and resulted
in $48.5 million in cost-plus-loss. The attendant loss of a heritage
forest that had stood for millennia is incalculable. That our American
forests are heritage cultural artifacts is well understood.
[Of the sampled trees] . . . about 16 percent of all
ponderosa pine had died within a year after the fires, many
from secondary effects--possibly bark beetle attacks. Another
18 percent are dying and will probably be dead within a year or
two. Thus we estimate that at least 34 percent of the mature
ponderosa pine trees will be dead within a few years of the
2003 fires.
About 42 percent of all scarred trees were dead and dying as
a result of the 2003 fires compared to 31 percent of the
unscarred trees. The fire commonly burned into old scars
inflicting heat damage to the cambium or consuming wood needed
for structural support, causing the tree to eventually fall. We
estimate that about half of living trees with historic bark-
peeling scars will die within two years of the 2003 fires.
. . . [The] bark-peeling scars [were] made when Native
Americans harvested the cambium for food. In the South Fork
valley, bark-peeling scars on living trees date back as far as
1665, and any accelerated mortality of these trees would
represent an unprecedented loss of living artifacts of a former
culture. [emphasis added]--From Keane, Arno, and Dickinson,
``The complexity of managing fire-dependent ecosystems in
wilderness: relic ponderosa pine in the Bob Marshall
Wilderness,'' Ecological Restoration, Vol. 24, No. 2, 2006.
Congress has never authorized WFU's, nor investigated them. The
time for that is long overdue. The WFU Program should be suspended
immediately and investigated by Congress to eliminate huge and
unnecessary fire suppression costs and resource losses next summer!
3. The Audit calls for a three-fold increase in WFU teams
(modules). These are 7-person teams that hike out into forests in front
of WFU's and attempt to predict fire behavior. However, the Audit makes
no mention of the fact that a WFU team was involved in a burn-over
event last summer where fire shelters were deployed.
Shelter deployment is a last gasp life-saving technique used when
all others have failed. Fire shelters do not guarantee safety, and
often fail to save the lives of the firefighters within them. Shelter
deployments are of critical concern to the firefighting community. Yet
Congress may be unaware of the Little Venus Fire incident:
Tuesday, the leader of the Unaweep Fire Use Module, Lathan
Johnson, made a presentation to fire managers and forest
administrators at the Middle Fork ICP. The presentation
detailed the fire shelter deployment they were involved in July
17 on the Little Venus Fire, Shoshone National Forest. While
hiking into their assignment, they were overrun by fire causing
the emergency deployment. They were in their protective
shelters over an hour until the fire passed. ``It's not easy
talking about this incident, but I'm hoping firefighters will
gain something from our experience and maybe it will help
others if they ever find themselves in a similar situation.
This is a stark reminder to all of us about the dangers we face
in our jobs and the importance of working together to make it
through difficult situations.'' (From InciWeb, National
Interagency Fire Center, July 24, 2006.)
You may rest assured that if those WFU team members had died
in their fire shelters, that would have been the end of the WFU
Program right then and there.
Now that Congress, via this testimony, has been informed of this
incident, and you realize that the information regarding this incident
has previously been withheld from you by the USDA and the USFS,
Congress must undertake a full investigation of the Little Venus Fire
WFU team fire shelter deployment. Congress and the public have a right
to know what happened, and we must learn from the incident.
The expansion of the WFU program called for by the Audit will
result in firefighter fatalities some day. When that happens, those
responsible may find themselves on trial for premeditated manslaughter.
As you should know, this is not idle speculation. Last year Federal
prosecutors filed manslaughter and other criminal charges against a
former fire commander, Ellreese Daniels, the fire boss in the 2001
Thirtymile Fire in north-central Washington that claimed the lives of
four firefighters.
4. The Audit recommends that the Federal Government reduce
expenditures by forcing state agencies to bear the cost of fighting
fires that originate on Federal property and spread to private
property. Their excuse includes reference to the imaginary ``wildland-
urban interface'' or WUI:
Federal agencies do not have the power to regulate WUI
development. Zoning and planning authority rests with State and
local government. Unregulated WUI development increases FS
wildfire suppression costs. Under the terms of current
protection agreements, FS and Federal taxpayers bear the
wildfire cost implications of development decisions made by
local governments about where and how structures will be built
in the WUI.
The inequity of this situation is further exacerbated by the
fact that only a small portion of the WUI is in FS or Federal
ownership. (From USDA/0IG-A/08601-44-SF, page 8.)
The diminution of rights in private property is not an equity or
fairness owed to the Federal government by private landowners or the
states! That statement is absurd and exactly backwards. The fires that
start on unkempt Federal land and spread to private property are
irresponsible spillovers perpetrated upon American citizens by their
own government!
The Audit seeks to blame the victims of horrendously bad Federal
land management policies, and to harm rural residents by withholding
firefighting funds to fight escaped fires from Federal lands. This is
more than inequity; it is tantamount to a wholesale attack waged by the
government upon the citizenry. No one in America, Federal Government
included, has the right to burn down their neighbor's property,
regardless of who owns it.
In many western counties the Federal Government owns two-thirds or
more of the land base. In those counties no private property is safe
from Federal holocausts, regardless of arbitrary mapping by government
regulators of undefined zones. Zoning is not the problem; catastrophic
holocausts raging down on rural homes and communities from Federal land
are.
Please don't blame the victims. Instead, protect us from misguided
and hazardous Federal policies and the wildfires those policies
encourage.
Last summer the Black Crater Fire (Sisters District, Deschutes
National Forest) caused home evacuations 12 miles away from the
ignition point and six miles from the U.S. Forest Service boundary. The
USFS delayed in suppression efforts on Federal land because the fire
was near a Wilderness Area. Then the fire blew up. Forty percent of the
acreage that eventually burned was on private land miles away from the
ignition point.
During the Black Crater Fire, Leslie Weldon, Supervisor of the DNF,
made a stunning public statement to the effect that if lightning
ignites a fire again this coming summer, she will declare the fire a
WFU and Let It Burn. When and if she does, the WFU will likely explode
and require tens of millions of dollars to suppress. A Type I WIT
(Incident Management Team) will have to be called to the Deschutes NF
for the third time in five years!
That level of irresponsibility coupled with in-your-face threats
made by public servants is simply not tolerable to Oregon citizens, or
to the citizens of any state, and Congress needs to correct this
situation, preferably before next summer!
5. Flirting with WFU's may lead to a regional firestorm destructive
beyond any disaster in U.S. History. If dozens of WFU's are burning
uncontrolled across the West during an upcoming fire season, and
concurrently a large windstorm arises, the wind-driven embers from
those WFU's could set the entire western United States on fire in a
matter of hours.
Such an event occurred in 1910 when 3 million acres burned in 36
hours. The Great Fires of 1910 burned mainly in sparsely populated
Idaho and Montana but still destroyed six towns and killed 78
firefighters in a matter of hours.
Windstorms are damaging enough to forests. When they carry fire
they can devastate whole regions: forests, towns and all.
The Audit recommends larger fires and more WFU's that burn for
extended periods. That policy is an invitation to regional holocaust.
Unless Federal fire policies are altered now, next summer could be
the most disastrous in American history.
CONCLUSIONS
The methods and conclusions of the Audit Report: Forest Service
Large Fire Suppression Costs do not follow standard and accepted fire
cost accounting fundamentals. As a result, the Audit recommendations
are misguided and incredibly destructive and dangerous.
Congress needs to reexamine fire suppression issues using qualified
experts in the fields of forest fire economics, forest fire
suppression, and forest management.
A reexamination using proper methods applied by qualified experts
will yield much improved recommendations, which if implemented could
cut forest fire cost-plus-losses in half. That is, the economic utility
of proper analysis could be $12 billion per year or more, not to
mention the protection of habitat, homes, and humanity.
The issues I raise in this testimony have magnitude and urgency. I
beg you to give them their due consideration.
Thank you for your service to America.
Sincerely,
Mike Dubrasich,
SOS Forests.
P.S. I can and wish to help you to save America $12 billion,
millions of acres of forest, thousands of homes, and dozens of lives,
every year, now and into the future, plus avert a potential regional
holocaust.
Please contact me for more information. [email protected]